From a Hot Tub of Lavender

Lie: I’m great at loving myself.

It’s been a long day; time for a hot bath and a good book while I let the essential oils seep into my pores, then curl up under my comforter with an episode of Chef’s Table I’ve already watched a dozen times because it’s so inspiring. I deserve this. I’ll try again tomorrow to be great.

Ok, I thought I was great at loving myself. Turns out I was just really good at taking baths and going to bed early. Every time I stepped out of the tub or rolled out of bed after a long sleep, I’d still look in the mirror and find nothing in my reflection worthy of a kind word.

Truth: I don’t love myself at all.

I mistook self-care for self-love. They are not the same. I became an expert at the self-care game after years of being careful with my body so I didn’t disturb the Chiari malformation in my brain, and to stoke the tiny ember of soul that hadn’t yet been destroyed by pain and grief. For a while it worked. For a time I needed that rest and recovery. But after a while, the more rest I got the more I seemed to need. The more carefully I treated myself, the more breakable I became. My world grew smaller every day.

And I still didn’t know what it felt like to love myself.

My efforts in self-care weren’t born out of love…they evolved out of fear. I was afraid of myself. Of my habits. Of behaviors I couldn’t break. Of physical pain I couldn’t control. I was afraid to live. Loving acts like the ones I spent so much time doing served to quiet the monster and prepare for more attacks that were sure to come because they always did. I gave myself permission to find comfort whenever I could since the rest of the time was so terribly uncomfortable.

That all changed when the piece I had been missing for years finally became clear. Connection. You can’t love yourself if you feel disconnected from your separate parts. My soul was hidden behind two decades of habits and addiction, my body a dumpster parked in the corner, overflowing with pizza boxes and empty beer cans, my mind—desperate for change—soaked up information it didn’t know how to apply, and at the helm of this crazy train was my frightened inner child whose only mission was to protect herself from the big, scary, unpredictable world.

When this finally became clear, I bawled my eyes out…then started the tedious process of getting my shit together. I can’t undo the damage from years of binging and failing to move my ass with documentaries and a few drops of the right essential oils. Self-care is an act, but self-love is a feeling. It’s being overwhelmed with the care and compassion that’s normally reserved for starving children and abandoned dogs, and extending that to yourself. It’s looking in the mirror at those lines, bags, sags, rolls, and skin, and proclaiming:

“I see you. I love you. What can I do for you today?”