How to Hate Yourself

"Children begin by loving their parents. As they get older they judge them.... sometimes they forgive them." - Oscar Wilde 

Do you feel like shit? 

Good because I’m about to make you feel shittier than ever. 

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In honor of the people who have been mentally torturing themselves in the last few weeks during this quarantine, I bring you your salvation: another blog post. I was kidding by the way, about making you feel shittier. I won’t. I think you’ve already had enough of that. 

Besides, the best person to compare you with a piece of excrement is probably you and we all know we can’t compete with that. 

No one is born liking themselves. 

From the moment the herons delivered us to our parent’s doorsteps, we’re fueled by the words of encouragement our parents say and showered by the affection they willingly give—especially when we’re doing a great job at whatever babies are supposed to be good at. 

But we grow, and just like that, no one is cheering anymore; there are no words of encouragement and there is no more love. Instead, they start pointing out what you’ve been doing “wrong” and suddenly, you are bad, a liar, a disappointment, a failure and our all-time favorite: a piece of shit. 

It doesn’t end there, you know. 

We are thrown to the outside world—where we meet other significant people like teachers, lovers, workmates, bosses—all of them contributing to the infamous dissertation of How [insert your name] is A Piece of Shit. 

Not only is this a pretty meticulous study about your flaws and screw-ups , but the fact that you have memorized everything inside it—including the bibliography and the necessary sound effects—is unbelievable. 

    

To hate yourself properly, you must first learn your history and study it. It sounds boring but it’s really quite interesting. It’s like, solving a math problem but without numbers and instead of formulas you have a set of past traumas. 

The thing about self-hatred is that most of us don’t acknowledge that it’s happening and how we’re absentmindedly involved in it. 

It requires a higher form of intellectual act called: awareness. I’m not saying you’re dumb if you’re not aware of who you are—I’m just saying that it’s hard to admit at the possibility that maybe you’re wrong and you know that your parents or teachers or exes weren’t treating you fairly yet still, you have their backs because according to you, they love you and they know what’s… “best for you”. 

Knowing your history is realizing that even if these people are explicitly not a part of your life anymore, they still rule each decision you make; from what you wear to what you say or how you think. 

And as a bonus, every time the world rewards you with, say, a great relationship or a job promotion, you immediately resort to the thought that maybe you don’t deserve these things because of that imaginary thesis study you carry with you all the time.

It’s okay to feel like shit. What’s not okay is allowing one rejection or one opinion make you believe that you deserve to be humiliated or suffer in misery and torture yourself mentally. 

If you really want to “honor them” for their inimitable opinion, do it by moving forward and facing the fact that you don't need this kind of cruelty you’re giving to yourself. 

(Let it be known that I lost my train of thought. Dad knocked on my door and offered me rocky road ice cream because he knows I’m dealing with massive hormonal imbalances. I love him so much.) 

Also, you’re not hating yourself properly if you don’t have a second brain. I’m not a world-renowned writer (yet) but I do know one thing: editing is easier than writing. Writing means you have to think of an idea and figure out how to express it. Editing, however, is correcting and polishing the idea that’s already there. 

If you let someone read the infamous dissertation of your tragic life story, you may be surprised how many words or sentences are useless and must be omitted. (These second brains I’m referring to are the people who you sometimes deem weak and stupid—your friends and your loved ones.) Or better yet, they'll throw that book or burn it like the good friend that they are. 

No matter how tired they are of your self-loathing drama, they will always remind you of something you always fail to see: that it isn’t your fault and that you're exceptionally not THAT awful. You just had a bad introduction to life. And you can go on and on and on in explaining to them that they’re wrong but we all know that if this was topsy-turvy town, you would do the same to them. 

I guess the hardest part of hating yourself is being on your side and realizing that you're not being nice to yourself right now. 

It's hard to do things when someone is being mean to you all the time so why you do you have to do it to you?

LOVE,

PLAYLIST:
Level of Concern by Twenty One Pilots
This Time of Year by Ra Ra Riot
Sophisticated Love by Analogfish
Playing with the Moon by Molly with Charles, Kate Williams, Wax Roof and MBK zu
Much Better by Jonas Brothers

*most of the things I said were from my journals and from the School of Life