Love Grows

    "Until you love yourself, you can't love anyone else." People have been telling me this, and variations on it, for as long as I can remember. And yet somehow, I've been tuning them out for over a decade (because obviously, I always know best) and thinking I can get along just fine without giving myself a thought. What do I need to love myself for? I love everyone else. I'd give anything for my friends. If I took the time to love myself I wouldn't have the time to give them, wouldn't be able to relate to their feelings as well. I would just spend all my time talking about how awesome I am.
    But recently I'm realizing more and more that those adults in my life who gave me advice actually knew what they were talking about (shocker, right?) and I should really listen to them. Because if I tell you that you are beautiful, then turn around in the same breath and put myself down, what am I really saying to you? That it's okay for me to have these thoughts but not for you? That nothing I say is actually worth believing, because I don't even believe it myself?
     Even deeper than not being trustworthy, how can I expect to understand you and your feelings if I don't even understand me and my own feelings? It isn't possible. And until I understand you, until I truly appreciate what you're feeling and going through, I can't really love you.
     So if my ultimate goal is to love, and I can't do that until I learn to love, how do I go about achieving success? Ironically, it seems that it isn't actually possible to do one without the other. I can't love others until I love myself. But through loving others and allowing them to love me, I'm learning to love myself more effectively than I think I ever could in isolation.
     Maybe that's the secret to all of it. Love can't exist in isolation. But through reaching out to others and showing them our love, we learn a little about our own strengths and weaknesses, our own values and beliefs. We see that there are people out there who want and need our love, and that validates us. We realize that their are people who want to love us. They have reasons to love us, usually good ones, and those also give us reasons to love ourselves. And little by little we start to understand. We start to love.