Whimsical self-love messages are everywhere these days. Mental health awareness is firmly in the zeitgeist, and although once taboo, talking about therapy is as humdrum as talking about a trip to the dentist. Even my Dove Chocolate wrapper told me to believe in myself the other day.
All my life, I never worried that much when an adult told me to “like who you are.” The idea seemed so easy to me when I was a kid — I couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t actually like themselves. The motivation to self-appreciate was thrust on us so frequently that it lost meaning, gradually getting caught up in the clutter with every other bump contouring the journey of typical adolescence.
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Maybe those teachers were on to something, though. As I was entering the final months of 27, submerged in the early years of my adult life, I found myself in a North Beach pizza shop, hiding from my friends who were still at the bar down the street and trying to conceal the fact that I was having a mild panic attack, unable to grapple with the reality that I couldn’t do what seemed so simple to me as a child.
I hated myself.
And the cashier probably just thought I was drunk.
It’s not that I hadn’t previously had these feelings; I’d just never gotten to the final, self-loathing conclusion. Like most middle-class kids, I was given a blueprint for how life is supposed to work. You go through school, play sports, make friends, have some teachable but not life-ending foibles, go to college, graduate, and find a job. I always knew what was coming next, and as long as I kept advancing, I didn’t have room to worry. The next step was all I had to think about.
I feel that I have to dig myself out of a hole with new people and earn their approval, rather than assuming I’ve already got it.
But after I ticked the box for “get job” and was done with that suburban utopia, long-suppressed anxieties started to rise to the forefront.
This gauntlet of issues starts with my default assumption that no one likes me when I meet them. I feel that I have to dig myself out of a hole with new people and earn their approval, rather than assuming I’ve already got it.
Let’s follow that up with the idea that despite having friend groups from each stage of life, I always felt I had no true best friend and that I was always secondary in people’s minds when making plans. Despite consistently getting invited to do things, I would tell myself that I only made these friends from just being around other people, by just tagging along. By default. What a lovely thought.
But if someone really obviously did want to hang out with me, I saw them as “nice to everyone” or “not choosy about who they spend time with,” as if those are bad things. I wouldn’t give myself any credit.
Most people lash out at others to hide insecurities — I do that too, but the target is myself.
These mental transgressions, give or take a few other insecurities, drove me into a deep rut, and by the end of 2018, I was desperate to find a way out of it.
I talked about moving, hoping a fresh city could inject some excitement into my life. In reality, it was the talk of moving, not the moving itself, that I wanted — the feeling that something new was coming.
Rather than make a drastic change, I decided on that fateful night in North Beach to focus on doing a few things I’d always said I would do but hadn’t made the time for. Greasy pepperoni pizza in hand, I went home and made the below list:
Goals for 2019
- Write something new once per month.
- Call my grandparents once a week.
- Text a friend from home once a week.
- Take an improv class.
- Read one book a month.
Let’s be real — I didn’t actually think sticking to this plan would instantly flip the magic switch to change everything, but I thought it might make me feel good to have this sense of accomplishment. I’ve never really been one for resolutions. The “new year, new me” declaration feels too hackneyed and hollow to carry any weight. But for some reason, this felt different, like I’d actually do these and feel better — at the very least, they’d mix up my routine and give me new experiences.
Two months in, everything was going mostly according to plan. I had finished two books, was midway through Improv 101, had more conversations with friends, and had driven my grandparents to insanity by calling them too much. Checking things off the list was satisfying.
Despite all this, my negative feelings persisted. Yet with all the torment and lonely afternoons spent reading, I felt as if somewhere down the line, something must be coming soon. Surely, something different had to come along eventually.
And then I met a girl. Writers have been translating the feeling of romance into the transcribed word for as long as words have existed, but you never quite get it until you’re in the midst of feeling it for yourself. The early stages of a relationship engulf you. You wake up and it’s all you think about. This girl was no exception. Sure, I’d felt this way in the past, but when you’ve been feeling the way I did, it hits you a little differently. A car could’ve hit me, but if I saw her an hour later, it would’ve been a good day.
This feeling makes every other problem in your life fade into the background, and my self-hating snags were relegated accordingly. When someone you think is amazing is telling you that you’re amazing, you get out of bed each day feeling like you’ve won the lottery. I had wanted to feel content, but this was pure bliss.
However, I need to clarify that this isn’t a love story. As relationships usually do, we eventually broke up—in this case, after seven months. Initially this sent me right back to sorrow square one. But I soon realized that square one wasn’t so bad.
The day after the breakup, the same friend I’d ditched in the North Beach bar had secretly convinced the rest of our friend group to come hang out with me so I’d be distracted from the split. It was a Monday, and the plan was to watch a football game between two teams that had just three combined wins in the season. It hit me that night that I was extremely lucky to have people in my life who care about me enough to rack up a pricey bar tab on a weeknight to watch pitiful football teams and wake up with a hangover just to make sure I’d be okay. No one asked any questions or needed an explanation from me — it’s just what they felt they should do. I’d never been so happy in a dive bar.
While there were still a few weeks of sadness, it finally dawned on me that I was focusing on all the things I didn’t have, instead of concentrating on what I actually do — and what made my friends, and this girl, like me in the first place.
This past year, I set out to complete a list: 12 books, 12 pieces of writing, a phone call a week, and constant friend communication.
In reality, I read three and a half books, called my grandparents once a month, and kept up with friends a lot more than I have in the past, but not on a weekly basis. I wrote six things but rediscovered my love for writing, which I’d lost for years.
Because of recognizing the people I have around me and trusting what they see in me, as well as what I know about myself, I’ve been the happiest I’ve been since 2016. This isn’t to say I’m perfect, but I’m doing a lot better than I was before.
Turns out the only thing I needed to list were the people I left in that North Beach bar.
