Self-Hate Is Pointless

I've never had body issues. I’m grateful for that.

Sure, some days I think I look like I've been resurrected from the dead and something went wrong in the middle of the spell. Some days, I think I look a bit spongy. And of course, there are things about my body that I think could be improved but I never think about it much.

Even though I don’t have body issues, I've hated myself for plenty of other things. My personal brand of self-contempt was focused on what is inside, not on what’s outside. I liked how I looked, but I hated my emotions. For the longest time, I've felt guilty and ashamed about the depth of my feelings—both positive and negative.

I wanted to be more even-tempered.

I also wanted to be able to just switch my emotions off. Especially in situations where emotional responses are frowned upon, I’d have loved to just pull a switch and be done with them. Maybe, that time when I told my boss “I know I am crying but I still mean what I say”, would not have happened. Then again, I can laugh about it now, so there is that.

I eventually learned that there is nothing wrong with the way my feelings manifest. The truly mind-bending discovery was that I don’t have to believe my feelings. That just because I have an emotion, doesn't mean I have to do "the things". I can have feelings without acting on them or doing something about them.

They just pass. All by themselves. Sometimes, I picture my negative feelings like a group of tourists with boundary issues. Annoying, loud, confusing, but ultimately only passing through.

Learning these things about my feelings helped me be more at ease with them, but it didn’t help me feel less ashamed about them. If I had a shot of vodka for every time I have apologized for my “emotionalness”, I could keep myself and all my friends in Cosmopolitans for life.

The apologizing only stopped, when I stopped blaming and shaming myself and accepted things as they were instead. I don’t know how I came to the epiphany, but somewhere in the middle of one of those shame cruises, I realised that self-hate is absolutely pointless. It’s the most useless emotion there is.

There are plenty of toxic feelings you can have, but self-hate takes the cake. Anger is pretty destructive, but it can also spur you into action. Sadness can be overwhelming but, at least for me, it also leads me to seek relief in creative activities. I don’t like to be sad, but at least I got some poems out of it.

I got nothing out of self-hate except shame, guilt, more self-hate, and an utter inability to move forward. It didn’t spur me into action, it didn’t help me change, it didn’t comfort me or anything. It only took, and took, and took.

So, I ditched it. I don’t know how I did it, but I and self-hate just went our separate ways. Kinda like when you have a toxic friend and just reach “enough”. Sometimes, things change in a split second, because you reach that point where it just doesn’t make sense anymore.

I realised that I have to spend all of my life with myself. I am the ONLY person on the planet who has to spend all their time with me. Every last minute.

So I figured that if I am stuck with myself, I may as well treat myself kindly and cheer myself on.

I went from being my abusive inner critic to being my own cheerleader. I am my coach, my confidante, and my smiling parent on the sidelines. I am my mother and my grandmother, my teacher, and my friend.

There is no other way to be.