"Love yourself", they said.

Oh, Self Love,

You never told me I’d need to disappoint my friends to be true to myself. You never told me I’d drop balls and not reply to messages and not always do what I said I would.

Dear Self Love,

You never told me it would be hard. And that I’d need to find ways to communicate to my friends that I still love them even when I choose to ignore them in order to look after me.

Darling, Self Love,

It appears you really aren’t a state that’s reached by many, for the fear of letting the other down is so great, so persuasive, (and pervasive) that we’ve been so conditioned to try and avoid you.

So, Self Love,

Will you help me to re-educate and reach my friends? The ones I love deeply and who I truly do want to keep in my life? Will you help me to reach them what the newest version of Caroline looks like, sounds like, and behaves like?

That sometimes she won’t show up, because she wants to go to bed?

That sometimes she won’t show up because the company she craves is her own?

That sometimes she won’t show up at all, in any form, because the idea of studying the latest thing she’s found is absolutely the most enlivening thing she could do on a night when everyone else is out?

And Self Love, will you help me to keep making those choices, from day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment… for the rest of my life?

Oh, I do hope so.

With love, Caroline… (still) learning how to love herself one baby step at a time.

P.S. I found this piece in my personal writing archives. It appears I wrote it 8 years ago. While a lot has changed in that time, the essence of this still feels very relevant and useful. Nowadays, it’s learning how to love me when I might disappoint my partner, love me when I might disappoint family, love me when I might disappoint clients.

Am I better at caring for myself, choosing myself, not abandoning myself and my own needs than I was 8 years ago? Heck yes. Do I still have a way to go before this feels more fluent, easy, normal? Heck. Yes.