How to Love Yourself When Life Feels Like It’s Falling Apart

Posted September 1Sep 1

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Would you still love yourself if you were fired tomorrow, and there was nothing impressive to say when people asked, “So what are you doing now?”

Do you think you’d love yourself if someone you swore was different ghosted you after three months?

Would you still love yourself if you lived with your parents because rent was impossible?

I’m 25, which is meant to feel like freedom, like possibility, like “your best years.”

But at the moment, it seems like failed adulthood.

I read about other people’s lives and let the weight of comparison press me down.

Everyone else is “building something.”

I feel like I’m just trying not to fall apart.

Here’s the ugly thing: sometimes I don’t like myself at all.

I play drunk texts back in my head, missed deadlines, the nights I said yes when I wanted to say no.

I also replay his expression when he realized I was more difficult than he expected.

And when that’s happening, self-love seems like the cheesiest, emptiest idea on the planet.

But then there are the little rebellions: the mornings I get myself out of bed when what I crave is oblivion; the nights I eat ramen for the fifth time — but at least I eat; the afternoons I give up pretending and confess to a friend, “I am at a loss.”

That isn’t glamorous, but maybe that’s what real self-love looks like — sticking with myself when there’s no pride in bragging.

“Your twenties are for finding yourself,” or so everyone tells you.

But what they don’t tell you is how much like losing yourself it feels in the first place: the loss of the old versions of you that can’t survive this chapter, unlearning the myths you were raised on, stopping the belief that you will be loved only if you are perfect.

So, how do you love yourself when your life is falling apart?

You’re choosing not to leave yourself in the ruin. You choose to stay, even when it feels pathetic to stay. You look at the version of you that messed up, that has zero money and no one to talk to, and no plan for the next five years — and you say, “I’m not going to abandon you.”

Because if I can’t love myself when I’m broken open and bleeding, then any love I give myself later will be conditional.

And I’m done with conditional.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.