If anyone was wondering if I actually hate myself, the answer is not anymore.

I used to struggle with an eating disorder and had very low esteem. When I was confident in the way I looked that day, things were good. If I didn’t feel good about myself, I would head to the gym to fix things. Or hide in my room. For years I battled weight loss, trying and failing over and over again.

When my eldest brother was a teenager, about 14 yo, he used to wear a t-shirt that had a cartoon monkey on it. The monkey had a broken arm in a sling, and a bandage around his stomach. His eyes were squeezed shut. He held a stick of dynamite, on fire and ready to blow. And the words at the bottom of the scene read “I’m a Slow Learner”.

Here it is. Thankya Google

I wrote “I hate myself” as an expression of my own skeletons in my closet. We’ve all got ’em. We all go through dark times and sometimes feel like our struggles will never end. We feel as though we’ve gone insane after making the same mistakes 900 times in a row.

And then we experience something good. A flicker of hope. A spark of joy. A moment of p e a c e. And these bits remind us that the dark times surely must pass.

And they do. What I thought could never possibly end, did. And it’s been two years since I have felt remotely close to self-hatred. Two years since I started my journey of self-love and acceptance. Two years that I started actually listening to my body’s signs and giving myself to recovery. Two years since I started listening to God again too.

Moral: don’t fear your skeletons. In fact, show them boldly to others. Don’t suppress your shadows; for they’ll always follow you around. The multifaceted human being wouldn’t be he or she without all parts, dark and light. Quit fearing what other people might think of you and simply live for yourself. After all, without you, there would be no meaning.

“What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.”

Ecclesiastes 3:9-13

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