Loving Yourself Is Not the Same

PREFACE: I am well aware of my Typical-Yearning-Young-Romantic-Poet-esque-Won’t-Shut-Up-About-Heart-Ache-He-Doesn’t-Understand Syndrome.

I recently saw a video of a wonderful lady sharing how to make the most of life, how to actually live it and not waste away to worries and materiality. On whole, I agreed with the video and found much to take inspiration from. The essential message was Do you think you will be enough once you achieve [X]? Because You won’t. You may, for a short time, feel a boost in morale, but this does not bring any true sense of completeness to your mind/soul.

One specific example that stood out to me was the idea that Finding someone to love does not bring you wholeness—loving yourself is what matters long-term.

This did not stand out because it was a new idea to me, but because it is one I often here. The irony of the statement is that the lady—though I do not doubt her kind intentions—was able to realise this advice after having finally found someone to love. The same is true of others from whom I have heard the sentiment. So, I take some issue.

I am not here to say that loving yourself is not important. It absolutely is, whether you have found love in another or not. And, I do: I believe I love myself as though it were a relationship: with love underpinning, I sometimes rejoice in factors of my life and being, sometimes I am at conflict with them, in which case I communicate with myself and try to work out the best and healthiest solution.

However, there is one thing in this life that cannot be done alone: the explicit nature of love with another. Another face in the ocean of eight-billion who knows you, who you know. Someone to share a hand-hold with in the simplest of times (walking around town, sitting out in the country) yet with the most abundant of meanings. To be there for someone as they face there struggles, through all of the in and out.

An optimist will tell you that all this love and dancing of the heart can be done for yourself. A realist, as I try to be, will tell you that this is true. But, just like those material purchases and temporary hobbies, those short-term attitudes and truncated dreams of magnitude, it only holds for so long. Eventually, you turn to face the side of the bed where you have kept a pillow clean, unrested upon by your head because it belongs to someone who is not there and has yet to ever be. You feel its invisible chasm. And, even greater so when someone enters your life only to tease with the possibility of filling it—not usually of their own doing but the fantasies that arise out of this pit at night, literally confronting you face-to-face in dreams. That kind of love that pools upon the ceiling above your bed, then breaking into droplets that are sucked in by the void. In that moment, you only hope that the void has a base, upon which some fluid future is forming and will rise to rest its head on the pillow beside you.

I had planned to write more for this next part, but for the sake of—hopefully—not boring you, I will cut it short:

Yes, feelings of loneliness come in stages. But as with love for another, love for yourself does not prevent arguments and conflict with the universe. Being on your own for long enough does eventually draw you to self-love, and I would never discourage this—I have much to say in favour of it and will always give advice for getting there. But self-loving for long enough can make you realise the importance of the desire to love another.

Of course, all of this pompous talk is extrapolating my experience and feelings into, from the way I have discussed it, what appears to be me declaring fact. I have no denial for personal experience and the arrival at completely different places. Perhaps this is why this has appeared in my ‘Blog’ section and not ‘Thoughts’. What I will declare is that my own experience of life, love and loss has packed my heart with a desire to love, but cursed it—so far—with the disability to fulfill.

I will never stop loving myself, and I will never lose the gravity of feeling there is such importance in sharing love. At least that is true for me. Both are beautiful. Both are needed.

So, no: loving yourself is not the same as loving another. They equally make up the Two Great Wonders of life, and one can never cancel out the value of the other.

— Written by every Romantic poet ever, prior to finding love.