Try all you want, but you can’t love someone else until you really love yourself.  You can’t really love yourself until you really know yourself.  You can’t really know yourself until you spend ample time on your own, swirling around the debris that gets dropped in your own personal stream.

Realizing that I had never truly loved myself and this fact alone had been the underlying cause of all of my failed relationships came as a shocking epiphany for me. Some things you learn in bite-sized morsels along the way, each morsel building on the last until you acquire a full understanding.  Learning that the love I thought I had for myself went no deeper than the layer of my own skin landed me into a heaving heap on my bedroom floor one morning, a long time ago.

I used to journal every night.  I still should, because journaling is magical.  I believe consistent, honest journaling could probably put most of the psychotherapy professionals out of work.  I believe this because I also believe that we already possess all of the answers and guidance we need from the Universe, God, Buddha or whatever deity in which (or whom) you believe.  It’s all there, like our abdominal muscles.  Exercise them and they become strong, apparent and defined.  Don’t and they are formless, shapeless and of little assistance to you.

Here is an excerpt of what I wrote in my journal that morning (minus the inky tear stains):

“This morning I woke up in that all-too-familiar place: the pit. I had that ongoing, relentless sensation in my stomach of needing to cry, but couldn’t.

I know I need to learn to love myself, but I don’t know how.  How do I get it out of my head and into my heart?  How do I own it?  I’ve been asking myself these questions and I woke up with a stark realization today.

I am tired.

I am tired of criticizing myself at every turn.  I am tired of pushing myself to be perfect the way the world and our society defines perfect.  I am tired of trying to be the best at everything, just to consider myself worthy. I am tired of disowning myself.  I am tired of abandoning myself because I don’t have a 16-year old body and skin anymore.

I saw myself doing all that I do to be worthy and having it NEVER BE ENOUGH.  I realized that it wasn’t that it wasn’t enough for those who cared for me.  They never expected any of it.  It was simply never enough for ME.

It occurred to me to thank myself, my body, my mind, for all that they do for me and to apologize for the self-betrayal and finally, to say “I love you” to me.  It was in that moment that truth slapped me in the face.

I had been looking to everyone else in my life to give me what I was supposed to give myself.

Because I never loved myself, the vacuum inside of me was always trying to suck it out of other people.  Instead of receiving love from other people as overflow in my life, the “icing” as it were, I was unconsciously demanding that they make up for what I did not know how to give myself.  I struggled in the quicksand of fear of betrayal, abandonment and rejection by the people I loved, because I had already betrayed, abandoned and rejected myself.  If they did so as well, I may as well be dead.

I’ve had love in vast supply and I’ve thrown it away because they couldn’t meet my needs.  Now I see that no one can ever meet the needs we are supposed to meet ourselves.  I tell my children, “Don’t ask me to do things for you that you are capable of doing for yourself.”  Mother, parent thyself.

I’m not saying I’ve homesteaded in the Land of Self-Love.  But, through this gift of awareness, I try to work the land every day, pulling weeds that sprout up and fertilizing the soil so my love for Self will grow.  Maybe someday, this work will result in a relationship of my dreams, but if it doesn’t, I know I still have me.  And, that’s the only way to love.