Make Banana Pancakes | HELP, RANTS ETC.

Not loving yourself ≠ Unlovable

I used to hear this phrase over and over again, like "You can't expect people to love you until you love yourself' or some variation and I fucking hate it? (Also unrelated but I've realised I've started using question marks to indicate a tone shift like I saw on Tumblr fml ... back to rant) and people who say this, I feel like they're intentions are good, saying focus on yourself and loving yourself but it's such an awful phrase.

Like you can ABSOLUTELY BE LOVED IF YOU'RE FINDING IT HARD TO LOVE YOURSELF. The phrase kind of implies that not loving yourself makes you LESS worthy of love for some reason and it's just such bullshit. Even in hard times when you don't like yourself, there will absolutely be people who love you and you are capable of loving them back.

When you're going through hard times, it can really help to have people who love you and stick with you, you're still deserving of their love, mental illness and other factors don't make you less deserving. Because the people who love you will always have reasons for loving you and they will still love you through it. Like I've found this phrase so demotivating too, like when people said to me in hard times, it felt like it was just kind of reaffirmed what I already felt too so it needs to be stopped.

It's just such a flawed thing to say. When you don't love yourself, it can be hard to see the things that people love about you but they're there, just like you can't see the sun at night but it's still shining away and other people will be able to see them, even when you can't, another reason why that phrase is utter bullshit.

This phrase needs to be just stopped and replaced with stuff like, just because you find it hard to love yourself, doesn't mean you aren't capable or worthy of love! It may feel that way but it's not true!

Also, whilst we're on the topic of self love, the idea that it's okay to take time off sometimes and focus on yourself too is important too. Like it can be hard sometimes, I always struggled with taking on other people's problems when I wasn't in a state too and it's okay to do that, if you're not in the right place, like sometimes you have to prioritise yourself. Like sometimes if I'm in a bad place and someone else is too, I'll just say that I'm not in the right place to talk at the moment and instead we'll just have a sort of mutual positive thing like listen to music together or something instead. It's hard to explain but I just wanted to mention that too 

Anyway, here's the little gif again because it's important - E x