To Me, From Me: Self-Love and Why Society Don’t Give a Fuck About It

Valentine’s Day has a way of reminding single folks of their irrelevance and centering romantic love. From advertising to Valentine's Day cards, it is clear that Valentine’s Day has a specific agenda. This agenda aims to romanticize love, further perpetuating that self-love and love between friends/family is inferior to love between partners. While it is important for love between partners to be celebrated and honored, it is also time that we expand our vision and definitions of love and romance. I began to expand on my own vision of love when I began to have inner conflicts with the hyper emphasis that was placed on womxn to find romantic love. I have well documented via youtube and facebook post my frustrations and poor mental health that had been triggered as a result of internalizing that I was doing something wrong with my life because I couldn't get a man to love me. Despite the fact that my mother instilled in me the power that arises from learning and loving to be in solitude, society diminished her teachings by heavily enforcing that my power lied in my ability to get men to "claim me". Though she planted this seed of self-love in me, messages of “you have not made it until you are bae-goals” had also been planted and this seed overpowered the other. This built up pain began to disrupt my life and one of the biggest disruptions that it had was the jealousy that I secretly held towards my best friend whom was in a blossoming relationship. The other biggest disruption lied in being blind to or unfocused on the powerful gifts God instilled in me. I couldn't and didn't see that my destiny was much bigger than my connection to a man. My gifts lay dormant or unpolished through my early 20's because I was attempting to escape myself by convincing myself that a relationship with a man would remedy my sadness.

After being tired of feeling enraged from feeling empty, I began to question, what is love? When we talk about self-love, what exactly is our societal and individual protocols and expectations of how self-love should be practiced? We tend to often root our approach to self-love within self-care practices that require us to spend money. But how do remove the practice of self-love from the dependency of systems that are responsible for diminishing our ability to be self-love competent in the first place? Oppressive practices tell us that we must love ourselves but shame us when we don't despite it not providing us with the means to do so, punishes us when we are self-indulged, and coheres us into thinking that love relies on everything outside ourselves. It wasn't until I discovered bell hooks “All About Love” that I began to have a deeper and new way to envision love for myself. She defined love as an act that involved nurturing our spirits and someone else's simultaneously. When I think of the act of nurturing, a few phrases come to mind: To hold, to be gentle, to care for consistently, and to speak life into. Her definition of love being centered around nurturing has nothing to do with romance or partnership but instead service to the spirit. What would the world look like if we were conditioned to understand love as service to our spirits and others? For starters, I believe we would understand that romantic relationships are laborious in the ways that they require for us to dig deep in ourselves so that we can learn how to nurture each other. We would know that the "BAE-GOALS" that we so desperately desire are not to be aspired to have unless you are willing to work with your partner and work on yourself in deeper ways. With this understanding, we'd be able to call bullshit on our obsession with romantic relationships if we understood the work it requires. Instead of seeing relationships as these blissful escape mechanisms from ourselves, we may see them as an extension of work that is or not happening within ourselves. This doesn't mean that we wouldn't desire deep and meaningful connections but we wouldn't fall in love with the aesthetics of it so easily without first having a full appreciation and understanding for the labor that goes into love. We would learn to have more of a value for the individual that endures both the self and the other.

We would stop telling people that they have to love themselves first without showing them practical ways of how. Once we do identify practical ways, we would begin to celebrate those in the pursuit of applying self-love(even when they get it wrong). We would begin to celebrate this valuable work in the same way we do marriage, parenting or anything involving romantic relationships. Our confusion for why someone just cant seem to love themselves would dissipate when we acknowledge how we prioritize romantic love over love for self. It would become clear to us why someone doesn’t have the vigor to love themselves in the same way they do someone else, because we've considered these factors as plausible. A day dedicated to love is a perfect time to re-evaluate our "love ethics" and strive to be inclusive and take serious self-love as it is the groundwork needed to show up in our best light. For folks whom are single, this is not a day to bash folks in relationships but to instead question where your jealousy is rooted in, if any, hold a loving space for your desire to be loved and explore how to expand your love in the meantime(bell hooks: All About Love is a good start). For folks in relationships, reach out to your friends and family who are single to plan some time to love on and romance them. We understand the true power of romance when we disconnect it from sexual ties. Lastly, regardless of our romantic relationship status, Valentine’s Day and every day is about reserving intentional time to love on yourself. If you are stressing on plans for your partner but have not created plans for yourself, this speaks to your own priority of self-love. It is ok to provide space for our partners, friends, and family but do not forget that you can be your biggest valentine above all!

Myisha is a young fly educator and business owner of an adult toy company named soulzandgspotz. She is all about dismantling bullshit and being cute.

www.soulzandgspotz

ig: souzlandgspotz