Deserving of love
I've been contemplating the notion of being deserving of love.
I have been single for a loooooong time now, and I'm okay with staying that way until I find someone who is worth the effort. But as a person struggling with mental illness (I'm Bipolar and have C-PTSD), I fear that I won't find someone who can love me with the darkness that comes with me.
I've heard sayings like "no one will love you if you don't love yourself," or "be someone worth loving and people will love you," and those sentiments always bothered me. I don't love myself, and I don't know that I ever will. I hate my brain for what it does to me without my consent. I am currently coming out of a hypo-manic episode that has been messing with my life the past couple of weeks and encouraged my psychiatrist to try more aggressive medication options than I am really comfortable with. It's something that happens every 16 months or so - comes with the genetics - and I do not love myself for it. I can't love these kinds of flaws. But does that seriously mean that I will never find someone who can love me in spite of my mental illness (or my other flaws, but that's not the point of the post). Do my mental health problems make me unworthy of being loved?
Society's answer to these questions would seem to be a resounding "Yes! You will never find love because you don't deserve it!"
That doesn't sit well with me - probably for obvious reasons.
Most people I know don't talk about their mental health problems in person, so I don't know if there are people in my friend circle that have their own struggles they don't wish to share, just as I've not told anyone outside my immediate family. But there are people in my family who have struggled, or do struggle, with mental illness, and many of them have found love. Does that mean that they were able to love themselves despite their illness and therefore become deserving of love? Well, two people spring to mind right off who might just hate themselves more than I hate myself for my brain.
I think this notion that you can't be loved until you have achieved some xyz type goal is bogus. We don't deserve love. We don't earn it. People aren't born unworthy and then have to work for it. Humans are all deserving of being loved. I have to have faith that there is someone out there who won't be scared off by my messed up neurotransmitters and will love me when I'm up, down, stable, or sideways, because I know that I could love someone who didn't love themself.
I have been single for a loooooong time now, and I'm okay with staying that way until I find someone who is worth the effort. But as a person struggling with mental illness (I'm Bipolar and have C-PTSD), I fear that I won't find someone who can love me with the darkness that comes with me.
I've heard sayings like "no one will love you if you don't love yourself," or "be someone worth loving and people will love you," and those sentiments always bothered me. I don't love myself, and I don't know that I ever will. I hate my brain for what it does to me without my consent. I am currently coming out of a hypo-manic episode that has been messing with my life the past couple of weeks and encouraged my psychiatrist to try more aggressive medication options than I am really comfortable with. It's something that happens every 16 months or so - comes with the genetics - and I do not love myself for it. I can't love these kinds of flaws. But does that seriously mean that I will never find someone who can love me in spite of my mental illness (or my other flaws, but that's not the point of the post). Do my mental health problems make me unworthy of being loved?
Society's answer to these questions would seem to be a resounding "Yes! You will never find love because you don't deserve it!"
That doesn't sit well with me - probably for obvious reasons.
Most people I know don't talk about their mental health problems in person, so I don't know if there are people in my friend circle that have their own struggles they don't wish to share, just as I've not told anyone outside my immediate family. But there are people in my family who have struggled, or do struggle, with mental illness, and many of them have found love. Does that mean that they were able to love themselves despite their illness and therefore become deserving of love? Well, two people spring to mind right off who might just hate themselves more than I hate myself for my brain.
I think this notion that you can't be loved until you have achieved some xyz type goal is bogus. We don't deserve love. We don't earn it. People aren't born unworthy and then have to work for it. Humans are all deserving of being loved. I have to have faith that there is someone out there who won't be scared off by my messed up neurotransmitters and will love me when I'm up, down, stable, or sideways, because I know that I could love someone who didn't love themself.
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