Self Kindness

Dear Delyara, Self-love sounded fake to me for years. It sounded like something people with healthy childhoods and good skin said online while drinking expensive coffee. I did not know how to love myself. I only knew how to criticize myself into functioning. I believed discipline had to be harsh. I believed kindness would make me lazy. I believed the only reason I had achieved anything was because I was afraid of becoming nothing. Then one day I got tired. Tired of speaking to myself in a voice I would never use on someone I cared about. Tired of acting like self-hatred was ambition. Tired of treating my own heart like an enemy camp. So I started small. I ate when I was hungry. I rested without earning it first. I stopped apologizing for needing gentleness. I bought myself flowers once and cried in the car afterwards. Maybe that was the beginning.