Mental Health Chronicles With Asher: Complexities of [Self] Love

De'Andre Bush

Even when I receive hatred in the guise of love, I welcome it. My lowliness convinces me that is more than enough. Maybe if I loved the man in the mirror, me, I would find love fulfilling.

Have you ever wondered how people are in love, but it is never you? Why they do not love back and are difficult to love? I know it is wrong and questionable, but I cannot help to wonder. Why do they receive affection and emotion when they have corrupt souls or no soul at all. Have you ever felt like this before? You look at yourself and convince yourself that it should be me in their position to receive the passion, infatuation, and romance for you are a better or less sinful human being. Then you find yourself not receiving the love from whoever you lust or desire it from and fail to even receive love from yourself. 

You fell in too deep into the narrative it should be and create unrealistic expectations. In the end, you subject yourself to a reality where you cannot receive love from anyone else and yourself included. Why? Because it does not make the cut off set expectations. You nurtured it long enough it wears a face of lowliness. That maybe I am not good enough for such love. You crave for love, but complex inferiority stomps you in fear that you might not get the love you expect and when you fail to get the love, the void inside of you pressures your mental trauma to new levels of mental tremors that desire to receive passion from suicide.

They say, “Love thy neighbour as you love thyself.” I asked myself, “How can I love myself without it coming off as pride and my self-love, not offending other people?” I knew I was asking myself the wrong question. I needed to love myself so that I know what love is? I saw nothing to love about myself but saw everything to love, adore and envy about other people. I saw nothing to love about myself. The tragedy is, I was struggling to realize how to love myself, and even if I were to receive the external love I craved, I would be blind and numb to receive it.

Even when I loved or rewarded myself, I felt like it was a burden. The words I did not deserve the love I was receiving from myself echo loudly in my head. Ironically I felt guilty showing myself love I freely give to someone else. When the same measure of love is for me, it is somehow unsatisfactory. Not that I expect a different form of love, but because I fail to love myself. Even when I receive hatred in disguise of love, I welcome it because I believe those who loved me were doing so on credit, as a mandate and a formality.