to beth, on her 32nd birthday.

i reread my own words from last week, my own refrain, echoing in my head:

it's okay to love yourself.

i assured myself, again and again, that it was true.

yes, it is okay to love yourself. it's necessary even. i was sure of it.

until this tricky question finally arose, once the wonder of this tragically new notion had worn off: what does that mean?

what on earth does it mean to love yourself?

a lot of cliché answers came up at first. things like: taking time for yourself, allowing space for relaxing, nourishing yourself, appreciating your own value and accomplishments. the things that kept coming up for me were all of utmost importance, but they were all things i've been doing. they were the symptom management tools, the external manifestations of a person, who ostensibly loves themselves. but that wasn't enough for me. i wanted to get at the root of it.

what is at the root of self love?

i asked myself again and again.

i read some poems. they always hold truths for me. i read some pema chödrön, looking for the same. i asked some of my friends. they had similar ideas to my own initial musings. all of these things held small kernels of it for me, but none of them really resonated.

but then, in one short email from a parent at school, it finally made sense to me.

the parent was hoping i'd be her daughter's teacher next year, because i was thinking of moving from my magical, ever-shifting puzzle of a teaching job to a regular classroom next year. after much deliberation, i decided to stay and keep on puzzling. she asked, in passing the other day, whether i'd be moving, and when i told her i wasn't, she was pretty heartbroken.

we exchanged some emails later in the day. she wrote some very kind things about why she hoped i'd be her daughter's teacher. i wrote back, as usual, too many words, some of which were the reasons i love her daughter. specific reasons. not broad generalizations. specifics.

and when she wrote back, again, i finally understood what it is at the root of all love, for yourself and for others, alike. she wrote:

You've broken my heart all over again. Having a teacher really be able to see your child is a gift.

she wanted to know her daughter was seen. that was it.

she didn't want the best dramatic play center or the best art projects or the most rapid acquisition of the ABC's. she just wanted her daughter to be seen for exactly who she was. and i saw her.

i realized this has always been true. this is how i have always consciously sought to communicate to parents that i love and care for their children. i make a point to acknowledge some small positive part of the child's day, each time the parent picks them up. so they know. i saw them. i see them.

i know what makes them laugh. i know how they act when they're tired. i know what and who pushes their buttons. i know what scares them. i know when they're ready to try new things, to be pushed. i know what motivates them, what their default is, what they're working on, where they're testing the waters. i know what they love. i know how they move, what they like to eat, how they laugh, how long they can go. i see them.

and that resonates in people. i cannot count the number of times i have said or done something simple that shows that i see them and a parent has said, thank you for loving my child.

so i got this far and it felt revelatory.

and then, in the same day, my brother's amazing girlfriend emailed me. she had made it through my long words from the other week and kindly offered some of her own thoughts on the process of learning to love oneself. she mentioned many times the idea of "understanding who you are," which felt the same as that same idea of being seen. it is simple observation of what is.

but then something else kept emerging too. she said she didn't have one simple magical thing to say. and yet she did. it was this word, again and again.

acceptance.

it's a word that gets tossed around a lot, but when i really think about it, it's fucking huge. acceptance is defined, loosely, as receiving something offered. it is taking what is given. it is not asking for something else.

so if step one is seeing, step two is accepting.

i thought about the babies some more. i thought about how i accept them.

i mean, if we're being real, they definitely make me insane plenty of the time. after so many hours of tiny people with loud voices, saying your name over and over and over and over and needing everything and crying and biting each other and wielding sticks as weapons of mass destruction some days i'm pretty over it. but i never blame them. i can get irritated, but then i remind myself, the four year old is being four.

i do not blame them for who they are. i do not ask them to be different. i ask them to treat others with kindness and respect. i ask them to push themselves. i ask them to find the edges of their comfort zone. i ask them to cultivate empathy and awareness. but i also acknowledge them right where they are and simply ask that they find a healthy way to express that space.

if that is not love, i cannot imagine what is.

it seems so easy when they're tiny.

it is so easy for me to say, i see you and i accept you. to give them the space and grace to just be. to acknowledge that they're growing and growing can be hard. it is so easy for me to love what is clearly doing the best they can with exactly what they have.

and yet i refuse to do it for myself.

i have found what, for me, is at the root of self love. it is understanding and accepting who i am. it is not fighting what is at my core. it is giving myself space to not even be sure what that is. it is not always waiting for something about me to change. it is the certainty that where i am right now is totally fine.

i've eaten like shit the past three weeks. i was stressed and working long days and endlessly emotional. i crammed myself full of all the food i could see. i gained five pounds in less than a month. i got my hair colored and it turned out yellow. too much iron in the blood. i cried about it. my house is a mess. there are beer cans on my front lawn in a vague circle that frames the baby pool that laid outside with four adult bodies crammed inside yesterday afternoon. i am vaguely hungover. i slept like shit and i am exhausted.

i also got some really wonderful affirmations from people i respect in the last few days. i got an email telling me my job from 10 years ago still owes me $300 in wages. my loving friends are throwing me a not-so-surprise surprise birthday dinner tonight. i have the best boyfriend and i am immensely loved.

it is all of these things and none of them being expressly good or bad. it is simply where i am. loving myself means looking at it all and not insisting that if things, if i, were even just slightly different then i would be better/ more valuable/ happier. loving myself is letting myself be uncomfortable with how uncomfortable that presently feels.

loving myself means treating myself like i would treat a child. with humor and ease and joy and acceptance. it is saying, beth is being beth. and letting it be.

to beth on her 32nd birthday, today you have reached the peak. you are at the top, because you are as high as you could go today. you are doing the best you can.

and that is enough.

it's okay to love yourself.

i can't write anymore.

i can't write anymore.

seven times last year, i committed words to the page. SEVEN. once every 52 days, on average.

i used to write basically every day.

now, i get too overwhelmed by all that i want to say, by the length of the path i know it will take to get there and i stop before i even get part of the way through.

i can't read your posts, people say. the words are too thick. there's too much. we live in a world of flickers, of imperceptible flashes of information. images and colors, second long gifs looping back on repeat, blurbs, moments, fractions of moments. that's all people want. we want what can be made instantaneously, consumed in a moment, and disposed of without perceptible residue. we want ephemeral and intangible. immediate and impermanent. we want bite-size and we want it all to taste and feel amazing.

i am guilty of it too. i can't even think my whole thoughts. i get lost in the wizening pathways of my brain. i don't even care to finish my own thinking. i begin and then i get lost immediately. i divert myself to social media. i hit refresh repeatedly. nothing comes of it. it doesn't feel good. i just keep clicking and clicking. i am trying to tap away my anxiety, put my finger over the sadness and smother it with a series of insistent, tiny clacks. if i push this one more time, perhaps i will finally suffocate it all.

it doesn't work. the stories are all still there, piling up, unfinished. filled with too many words, but still never enough to tell a whole story.

the stories i begin are about my upcoming birthday, the final arrival of my self-asserted peak. the stories are about good food and exercise and the way i've made good food and exercise as unhealthy as the absence of those exact things. the stories are about nic's absence and my floundering. they're about my anxiety to do anything and my inability to let myself do nothing. they're about the endlessness with which i clean, organize, wipe down, straighten, check my phone, clench my teeth, adopt any way to manifest my anxiety that perpetuates its existence instead of challenging it. they're about how i hide, how i create reasons to say no, how i just want to be alone. they're about getting in the car, repeatedly, and the immediacy with which i cry. and how, one day, my tears match up with the rhythm of the rain and, for a moment, it feels magical enough for whatever weird, creeping sadness that's within me to at least feel seen.

they're about sadness. they're about me.

they are always, always about me.

i am aware, fleetingly, that this is maybe part of the problem. or the whole problem.

the problem is not any thing to be fixed. the problem is my attitude.

in general terms, i feel that nic helped pull me out of a terribly unhealthy place. he challenged me to be better and i rose to that challenge, slowly, but steadily. two years later, i am a person quite unlike the person i was when i moved here.

i started to write the list of how i am better, different. but i stopped. it doesn't matter. you get it. or you don't. or you don't care and you haven't even read this far, but either way it doesn't matter. it's not about the list, it's about the existence of that flip. i've inverted. i've turned myself inside out and begun to scrape out the filth that's built up inside me.

but now nic is gone a great majority of the time. he's flying airplanes out of st. louis, and i must be clear that all my misery is not his fault and i know that. he is absurdly happy and i want nothing else for him or our relationship other than exactly that. in fact, i believe it's essential to the long term well-being of our relationship. because i am understanding my current tumult to be something akin to this experience:

at my yoga studio, a good chunk of the classes have assistants. the assistant walks around from student to student and helps adjust or deepen their poses. they are wordless, walking up behind you to even out and stabilize your hips, lengthen out the sides of your torso, and then tilt their hands ever so slightly to eke your body into just a slightly deeper twist. they don't yank you. they don't push you beyond your ability. they just meet you right where you are and edit it slightly to take you just a little bit deeper, to help you align yourself just a little bit more intentionally. it is magical to feel yourself move beyond the place that felt like farthest you could go with just the smallest bit of assistance.

but a funny thing happens, often. you lean into them. you get used to the hand there. and as they gently release you, you begin to flounder. almost always at this juncture, i fall.

there is no shame in falling in yoga. it's evidence that you are pushing your limits.

but in this instance, i also recognize it as the distance between that new place the assistant showed me and the place i'm used to resting. i can get to the new place, but i only let myself get there with help. and once the help leaves, i tumble.

i believe i am now in the tumble. i don't have nic to help regulate me on the daily. i am, once again, alone with my thoughts and my neuroses and, without nic, everything is magnified. it's all just so much harder on my own.

i feel powerless. i feel weak and ugly. i feel like i have no agency, that i'm at the mercy of the many endless variables at school, that i'll never be able to support myself financially, that i'll never be in a respected position, that i'm awkward and homely, that i'm crunchy and achy.

this is the constant loop in my head. negativity and bullshit. i am fully aware that we find whatever we're looking for. i've headed out on this ugly trajectory and now all i can do is find things that affirm it.

i think the sadness comes from my unwillingness to do it on my own. i want it to be easy. i want the same, immediate satisfaction that we all want from memes and twitter and junk food and tinder/ bumble/ whateverthefuck that gives us some instantaneous ignition. some quick, saturated reminder that we are indeed alive and that alive is full of feeling and meaning.

i'm not sad. i'm just deferring to the only thing i ever knew on my own. i'm reverting to the original pose.

i'm not sad.

i believe people are inherently good. i believe we are trying our best, which sometimes, often, does not look like a lot, but it is. i believe all ugliness just comes from fear. i believe fear can be mended with love. i believe i am protected by the universe. i believe things will work out. i believe, always, i will be okay. i believe i am deeply loved. i believe in caring for myself and others.

i believe i am a little stuck. i believe i will get unstuck.

nic left for st. louis earlier today. he was home for about 60 hours and half of that i was at work. he'll be gone for eight days.

i've been putting him through it. i've been falling apart. i walked in the door from work on friday and cried in his arms. i smeared mascara on his new shirt. i sobbed and when he asked why, i couldn't answer. i feel too much and i feel nothing.

in writing this, i have small moments of clarity. instead of feeling ruled by the ideas, for a moment, i feel in control of my brain. i am making it slow down enough to commit words to paper. in that perspective, i realize how much i am putting my partner through.

i text him,

i apologize, deeply, for being a shit head, and thank you for the fact that you never throw it in my face.

nic never throws it in my face. i have had full on, raging tantrums and the next day, the next moment even, he always assures me that i shouldn't sweat it. he heard me and he understands. i'm his girl.

tonight is no different.

you're silly, he writes.
it's all good.

and then,

that's love.

i cry again. (sheesh). this time, not because i'm so namelessly sad. but because i think this is all i'm looking for, at all, everywhere, in every way. because this time i recognize it.

i am looking for love.

i believe all ugliness just comes from fear. i believe fear can be mended with love.

i just wrote those words. i wasn't setting myself up for anything. they were just part of what's swimming around in my head.

i have felt really, really, really ugly in every way lately. my spirit feels ugly. my heart feels ugly. my face feels ugly. i am deeply terrified that i will not be loved. the person that held me up has gone away and now i'm floundering, wondering if i'll still be loved.

nic loves me. i don't doubt it. i don't rationally doubt it. i often emotionally doubt it, just because i'm prone to insecurity and drama.

but that's not where this fear is coming from.

this fear is coming from the place, in which i've grown so much, in which i've done most of the things i challenged myself to do years ago, and i don't love myself any more than when i started. not even an iota.

i expected external changes to fix what was always an internal problem. i have controlled many of the symptoms but not cured the illness. i keep thinking that if i just organize my home enough or eat clean enough or get fit enough or make enough money or gain enough respect that THEN i will finally feel good, but it's none of those things. it's nothing. it's just me. it's inside me.

shit.

i am days from 32. i am days from the peak i always promised myself, even in jest. i literally just realized this all. it took me over 1700 words to get here, but i'm glad i did it.

i have controlled the symptoms, but i haven't cured the illness.
i have long since been afflicted by some silly belief that i'm useless and ugly.
it's a fear that i'm useless and ugly.
i believe fear can be mended with love.

to beth, on her 32nd birthday, you are worthy of your own love.

it's all good.
you don't have to be perfect. you don't have to not make mistakes. you don't have to make everyone happy. you don't have to always say yes. you don't have to fix everything. you don't have to apologize. you don't have to do anything. you don't have to do any one more thing than you've already done.

it's okay to have some sugar. it's okay to skip a day of exercise. it's okay to leave the mess. it's okay not to know. it's okay to be scared. it's okay to wonder. it's okay to feel wrong. it's okay to love yourself.

it's okay to love yourself.

it's okay to love yourself.

no one else can do it for you. it is your turn to hold yourself up.

stop repenting, stop apologizing, stop justifying, stop asking for more, stop trying to control.

it's okay to love yourself.