Secrets to Loving Yourself

"As the saying goes, never let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired."

When I was a child, I was loved but faced inconsistency from my parents. They divorced and involved me in a fourteen-year custody battle. My parents' mental health was also poor. One would appear and the next moment disappear. This inconsistency caused me a lot of pain.

To cope, I created multiple personalities. As my home life became more and more unstable, I turned heavily to these personalities to outlet my love, make decisions, and deal with the guilt and shame I felt surrounding my circumstances. They were tremendous help—they gave me hope and allowed me to feel in control of my life.

When I lost them, I lost the tools to cope with the ongoing issues. Loosing the personalities I'd created made it even harder going to university. I developed severe anxiety, which meant I wasn't able to connect with the people around me and my teachers.

I skipped classes and became even more out of touch. I was depressed and so unhappy I frequently thought of ending my life.

When I stopped believing in the personalities I created, I stopped being able to love myself and be happy. For the past year, all I wrote in my journal were suicide notes. I'd once had a passionate dream of becoming a writer but grew to feel useless and meaningless. I thought it'd be better to die.

Someone once told me the only reason people attempt suicide is because they want to change. I've spent the last year considering what I want to change and discovered that I don't want to die because I love myself.

While suffering from depression, I often felt disappointed in others. I felt alone in the world and wondered why, but I also realized that I would never truly be alone, because I had the capacity to love myself.

Those personalities were fragments of my true self. While I thought I hated myself and thought it'd be better to kill myself, I also thought that deep down a part of myself cared for me. I couldn't explain this understanding. It felt inaccessible to me.

Then, one night a couple months ago, I sat down and wrote a love letter to myself, radiating with love I hadn't felt in years. It was a powerful experience after only being able to write suicide notes for a year or more. And any time I'm feeling sad, I talk to myself when I'm alone in my car. I'm able to access the part of me that cares so easily now. Maybe it looks crazy, but to me it's the only time I can calm down and not feel overwhelmed.

One of the secrets to truly loving yourself is to speak to yourself in the second person. If you say, "I forgive you!" it has a completely different effect than saying "I forgive myself!" or "I forgive me!" To explain, one sounds like a request and the first sounds like the powerful reunion between friends.

The secret of loving yourself is also the secret of creating yourself and accepting the power to be multiple and infinite.