Our Book of Rants

30. Vika

Okay, so last chapter Mad talked about self love. and how crushes affect everything, and my chapter today will probably contradict everything she said, but this is important too.

I hate myself. I have hated myself for nearly all of my existence. I know that I'm awesome, I'm fucking brilliant, but I hate myself. I'm good at what I do. I have goals in life, I will accomplish all those goals someday, but being aware of all my good qualities does not make me hate myself any less.

Crushes increase our feelings of inadequacy.

That's not wrong. But that's not always the case.

I have a crush on a guy. He is, to most people a nerd. Which I guess he is. But he's really nice and awesome and cute and makes fandom references all the time. And I started talking to him five months ago and I've had a crush on him since May. And ever since then, I've started loving myself more.

I periodically send him links to stuff I write. And he compliments it every fucking time. I don't need validation. I know I write well. But sometimes, it helps. Somebody telling me my sentence structure is good just makes my day.

He replies to every weird af text I've sent him. That's helpful too. I don't really know what to say. I'm terrible at motivational talks.

And I don't know. I've started being a nicer person lately.

It helps. Validation helps.

Self hatred is a cycle. A terrible, terrible cycle. And like Mad said, it's important to get out of the cycle before it becomes all consuming.

And I have phases. Phases where I really really love myself, and really really hate myself. And the hate myself phases have been a lot less since May.

Him complimenting my writing is really nice. Because people who read your writing don't always take the time to tell you it's good. Okay fuck I'm actually terrible at this.

And basically my point is, we do need to learn to love ourselves. That's important. But sometimes, we need validation. And getting that validation from others helps.

We shouldn't care about what others think. That's true. But ultimately, society does cause us to care about what others think. I'm not saying that everyone should care about what others think. I'm saying that for some people, it's difficult to not think about what others think of you. So learn to focus on the people who compliment the things you're good at, and slowly, someday, you'll learn to love yourself too.

~Vika