Because, before self-love becomes a liberation, it is first a burden. Well, there's the anger at who treated you poorly when you didn't know to ask for better treatment. The anger at yourself for what you've allowed. There's the grief for lost time. There's the strangling necessity to push people, things, ideas out, out, out because there's no room for them. There's the loneliness and isolation that accompanies the growth of self. There's the new boundary lines, the new range of the word no, the opening of eyes that would rather be shut, and the terrifying realization that love isn't synonymous with joy. It's synonymous with growth.
And growth isn't bliss. It never was. It was a lie that said love would be white-teethed smiles on beaches.
The pinnacle of self-love is not endless ecstasy.
It is a heartbreaking process of undoing the life your unloved self built, brick by unworthy
brick.
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