Somewhere along the line, I got the message that I'm not supposed to like myself. I am not the default. I'm Black, so I'm not as smart. I'm gay, so I can't get married and I can't be a real man. I don't have a religion, so I'm going to Hell. None of my friends and family ever told me any of this (besides the messages, implicit and explicit, about being gay).
I've had self-esteem issues for a long time, it's just I've learned to hide them well. I had to teach myself what self-love is and what it feels like, no one could do that for me. All my life I've been 'different' from other people, and at some point it really got to me. I honestly felt I couldn't be loved as a gay man because I'm Black, that I couldn't be accepted by anyone because I'm Black and gay. There are days where I don't wake up loving myself. Why do you think I care so much about my appearance?
Because if someone loves the outside, maybe, just maybe, they'll love the inside.
We live in a country and a world where we have to teach ourselves to love ourselves. Self-acceptance is an elusive goal. We are constantly being told that if something was different, we'll be more accepted. If I could just wear better clothes, if I could be smarter, if I could be White, if I could be straight, if I could be Christian: if I could, then someone would love me. Right?
I don't know how many of you grew up with these messages, or if you did at all. But I did, and it's taken a lot of work to get around them, but to also make sure that I didn't do the same to anyone else. When I was 12, I made fun of a girl for having big lips (which is all sorts of ironic). Then a bunch of boys one day came up to me to tell me I'm gay, eventually passing around a petition, signing their names, as another declaration of the fact. I've been on the receiving and giving ends.
I'm writing from an emotional state, so I feel a bit all over the place, but my point stands. At one point or another, I've hated myself. That's no way to live, and sometimes this is no world to live in.
2 comments:
Kind of curious, what will it take for you to finally feel accepted? Or will that never really happen?
Well, it's gonna take me. I'm the key to making that happen. But it would be ideal to live in a society that actively promotes self acceptance (at least to a higher degree than we do now)
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