A guide to self love by someone who doesn’t have it figured out yet

Words by: Nilo Khamani / Image by Halima Jibril

CW: weight loss mention

Let’s be honest for a tiny bit. Self-love, as a concept sucks. Self-care even more. It truly does. The fact that I have to spend my resources, both time and financial-wise, repairing the damage created because I was unfortunate enough to be born outside of the frame of what’s considered beautiful actually makes me furious. And I might not be in the best place to write about self-love right now, but I will anyway. That itself is a form of self-care: allowing myself to be angry and frustrated with myself, and still trusting myself enough to let my feelings out.

I’ve spent years upon years trying to figure out how to deal with it. At a very young age, I turned my insecurities into some kind of internalised misogyny. If I wasn’t barbie doll-pretty, I wasn’t pretty enough to be feminine in any way. I spent some time being “not like the other girls,” because that’s what felt right at the time. But then Twilight was released, and for some reason, the movies were a turning point where I realised I’m allowed to enjoy things, even if they’re centred towards girls and even if I might not look like those girls. Twilight was my tiny revolution, I read all the books in less than a week and fell in love with Robert Pattinson even though I was team, Jacob. It was amazing to me how I could like something even if others thought it was awful, and suddenly I was free. For a little while at least.

Because a few years later, I was once again hyper-aware of what I looked like and how my body moved. I started losing weight at 15, thinking it was the answer to all of my problems. Can you blame me? There are few things as encouraged as weight loss as if it’s a magic fix to all of your problems. It took me years to figure out that shallow and quick fix-coping mechanisms are a thin surface to much deeper problems. So I went to therapy. I didn’t tell many people, not because I found therapy shameful in any way but because in my mind, people who knew would no longer see me, only my problems- just like I did. It took me a little while to realise that the only reason they would see me without my other traits would be because they slowly disappear when you’re fixated on a few small things about yourself - my therapist helped me make that clear. It was a lot of truth at the same time and I was in a brief state of pure panic because I, for the first time in my (then) 18-year-old life, truly started to work on myself.

What do I actually like? What calms me down? Why does it calm me down? I decided I would take a gap year, to think and to breathe. I had to allow myself to exist outside of the frames that had defined me for so many years. It was a good decision, even though I might take a Uni course next year and start studying slowly, earlier than I intended, even if I got a job and then decided it wasn’t for me, I have learned many things in a short span of time that I don’t think I would have if I didn’t decide to prioritise myself the way I did.

Now here I am. Excited for the future. Kind of. A little more secure in myself, and I trust myself and my body more than I have ever done before. I still have a very long way to go, but I am able to appreciate the differences I’ve made in my life. Two of the things I figured out were:

Firstly. You’re allowed to make self love cool. Like really, really cool. I would tell myself that loving myself for being who I am in this age is the most radical thing ever, and I still do sometimes. I grew up being someone who doesn’t conform to the beauty standards, and I still don’t conform to them in ways. I was asked if I had considered getting my nose done when I was twelve. I was trying to get my parents to perm my hair for years. I was told by my school nurse to watch what I ate when I was as young as nine or ten. I would literally fantasise about being other people as if existing was a crime. Your existence is not a crime. You’re allowed to have a big nose. You’re allowed to have curly hair. You’re allowed to have dark skin. You’re allowed to be fat. Whoever you are, whatever you look like, you have just as much right to look that way as other people look their way.

Secondly. You need to figure out what self-love, and self-care, means to you. Self-love for me is many things. It’s caring for future me, by writing down poems I enjoy or making mind maps of ideas I have because I know sometimes life comes in between, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do what I love. It’s cooking myself a meal that’s a little too complicated at that time, but I know I’ll enjoy it. It’s also accepting myself when I’m not doing my best, and recognising what my body needs. Self-love can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you know it’s being done out of love. Make a list, or make ten different ones, just recognise how you should treat yourself, for you to be happy.

You benefit from every single thing you learn about yourself, no matter how small. Figuring yourself out takes time, but it’s a process that when you see results, is worth it. There’s a quote I think about a lot, one that has really been stuck with me since I heard it. When singer Lizzo was performing at the NPR office for a Tiny Desk concert, she finished the show with: “If you can love me, you can love yourself”. Think about it. It made me throw “If you can’t love yourself you can’t love anyone else” out of the window in a heartbeat. We walk around our whole lives loving others: family members, friends, partners, celebrities, pets. You walk around being filled with so much love for other people, who says you can’t use some of that love for yourself?