Self-expression and Self-love

When I was a child, I loved myself. I was by no means shy or shameful or indecisive. I was firm about who I was and what I wanted. I was passionate, I was a dreamer, I had a soul that could not be sated. Now, I was also a brat. I was unruly and sometimes rude, but even those things I had trouble discrediting when my mother told me I shouldn’t be them, because they were part of me and I loved me.  

I was free to love myself because no one had yet told me loving myself was wrong. No one had yet shattered the passion and the dreams. No one had told me that I wasn’t enough.

Over time, I experienced comments and conversations with friends, family, strangers—those who were well-meaning, misguided, or cruel—about my body, my intellect, my talents, my potential, and my personhood:

“You’re so fat!”

“If you gain more weight, I won’t be your friend.”

“You’ll never be a singer.”

“You don’t have what it takes to be a writer.”

“You’re too ambitious.”

“Going to college is too risky.”

“You’re too emotional.”

“You’re inconsiderate of other’s needs.”

“No one wants to around someone who’s bitter and depressed.”

It was amazing how I was either “too much” or “not enough”.

The list goes on. I fought these messages of inferiority and insignificance. But at some point, I broke.  I invited these lies in. I stripped myself of my confidence and my surety. My heart, which I had delightedly worn on my sleeve became battered and bruised. I tucked it away back into my chest and built defensive walls. My heart no longer beat with passion, but with fear.  

I believe my Christian upbringing also played a part in this emotional retreat. Whether this message was taught to me explicitly, or it was something I inferred, I genuinely believed that I didn’t matter. Other’s needs and wants were always more important than mine. I heard every week how sinful I was and how horrible humanity is. I read Matthew 22:39 as “Love your neighbor, not yourself.”

(Now, before anyone freaks out, I have not abandoned my faith. I love Jesus. I love being a Christian. I love the church. And yes, Matthew 22:38 is more important than Matthew 22:39. But the church messes up sometimes. Sorry.)

And you know what I’ve noticed? For me, there is a direct correlation between self-love and self-expression. The first time I stepped on stage to perform, there was no fear. I was four years old. I took my small, non-speaking role incredibly seriously. After that first play, I knew that I was an artist and I would work hard for my art. This was how acting was for me for the majority of my childhood and a good part of my teenage years.

This makes sense, doesn’t it? Because I loved myself, and I loved being me I had no problem sharing myself and expressing myself through the arts.

Now I’m here. Over the last few years, I have struggled intensely with self-hatred. I have apologized to people for things I didn’t need to out of fear that they would be angry with me and hate me as much as I hated myself, I have lectured myself over actions which were simple mistakes, not heinous crimes, I have taken my attributes and tried to stuff them in a suppressed box because they were so abhorrent to me.

Now, I am afraid to act. I am afraid to sing. I am afraid to engage with people and form relationships. I am afraid to express my opinions.  I am afraid to express myself. How can I express myself, when I hate myself? Why should I express and share myself when the person I am is so unworthy?

These are the lies I fight consistently. Maybe you fight them too. It is a worthy fight, because God desires for us to be whole. He desires for us to enjoy Him, to enjoy ourselves (He sure does), and to enjoy others.

I don’t have the answers. I am not there yet. I don’t completely love myself. I still fall into self-destructing patterns. I find artistic expression daunting and exhausting. Who knows if I will ever again be able to act with the true self-abandon I experienced as a child. But I am working on bring down those walls around my heart. Because self-expression is beautiful and powerful. It is necessary. So is self-love.

“Love your neighbor AS yourself.”

I promise to fight to love myself. And I promise to fight to love you too.

Suicide Prevention Week: The List

I was ten years old when I had my first suicidal thought. It wasn't a thought, really. It was a desire. I had a strong, unexplained desire to kill myself. I was scared and I didn't know whom to talk to about it or what to make that feeling go away.

Suicide has crept along after ever since then. I have lost three people in my life to suicide. The intimacy and intensity of those relationships varied, but each one of them impacted me. The trauma from losing someone you love or admire to their own self-destruction is incalculable. And you feel it in ways you would never imagine. And the hole that's left in the world, in your world, never completely mends.

For many of my teen years, I struggled on and off with suicidal ideation. But I knew no matter how much I wanted to kill myself, I couldn't leave the people I loved with the pain of my absence. I would not be another hole torn in someone else's tapestry.

Also during my teen years, (and I admit with a weary heart, even now), I had several friends who were extremely suicidal. I held friends in the middle of the night as they told me that if they killed themselves it would be part of God's plan. I heard, "When you're in so much pain, in that moment, you can't even think of anyone else". And yet, they kept fighting. When I asked my friends who were suicidal what kept them going, I heard various responses. Some said the fear of hell prevented them from killing themselves. Others admitted that they hoped there might be a better way out of their pain. All of them said: I love the people in my life too much to leave them behind.

And this, my friends, is so, so powerful.

Over the past three years or so, my own fight with suicidal ideation has returned with full vigor. A few months ago, I was at the end of my rope. I woke up every morning, wishing I were dead. Through-out the day my fantasies and ideations would accost me until I went to bed. The whole dismal tune would start up again at the rise of the sun.

I was beginning to think that I was nothing, that I meant nothing and that if I left this earth, it would be painful for some, but that in the end, it wouldn't make much of a difference. This was a lie and I knew it. So one particularly hard day when I had been looking up methods of suicide on my phone in class, I decided that I would fight this lie by making a list of reasons to live. A list of people. I started out wanting to make a list of people that I deeply loved, hoping to remind myself that these people I loved would be so hurt if I left.

As I started writing down names, however, I realized that I was writing down names of people that I barely saw. People I had only known for a few months. Names kept coming to me, and soon I had the most bizarre and broad list of people in my life all together on one page.  

I started to cry as I understood. I could have sat in that barely obscured hallway at school for hours writing name after name. Each and every person on that list, whether I was close to them or not, whether I had known them for ten years or ten weeks, would be affected. Just like I had been devastated by the suicide of a man I had only met twice.  

So, please, my friend, if you are struggling with any of this, if you feel unloved or unwanted or worthless, write a list of people in your life. Please see how much you are loved and cared about. See how many would miss you, and mourn you, and feel stabs of guilt over not having let you know just how incredibly special you are to them. If you are convinced that you have no one in your life who will be affected by your death (and you can trust me: you're wrong about that), then hold on to this: There are people you haven't met yet who will love you. And they need you to love them too. These people are your reasons to live.

The day I wrote that list at school with quiet sobs escaping my lips and streaming tears dotting my notebook, the custodian came down the hall. He was such a friendly man, always so kind to me. He saw me crying, and he stopped to gently touch my knee.

"Are you alright?" He asked me with very genuine concern.
I shook my head, but I told him, "I will be."

I was right.

Also-I added him to the list.

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If you or someone you know are struggling with suicidal ideation, there are resources for you. Please reach out:

Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1-800-273-8255

OR

Text GO to 741741 to reach a trained Crisis Counselor through Crisis Text Line, a global not-for-profit organization. Free, 24/7, confidential.