Love Yourself?

“The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.” - Mother Theresa

“Poverty is the worst form of violence” - Mahatma Gandhi

They say you'll never find love until you love yourself.

Why?

That makes no sense. From what I can tell, the mass of humanity do not truly love themselves, or do it imperfectly, in a half-assed fashion, picking and choosing among their secret histories and abilities and characteristics those to exalt, and those to revile. It's one of those things women tell you when they won't tell you what they really mean, or don't know what they mean, maybe. Just that they hate you and think you're junk. Somehow, you're just missing some magical, ineffable trait, invisible and unprovable, and if only you'd try harder, then they would love you.

It's a cop out. A way to throw it all on you, and leave you with no defence. “It's not me, it's you.” And somehow, they think they know what you're feeling better than you do. That they can see so far in you to your core and say “That part is missing. Fuck off, chump.”

It's a bunch of nonsense. But you can't really argue with it. It's a Zen Koan.

So what?

Well, I do love myself. Sure, not every part. My skin is a little too pale and flabby. I have a stupid laugh. I sometimes get spiteful when I'm hurt. I'm scared of confrontation, and pretend I understand politics more than I really do. Occasionally I embellish my achievements. Sometimes I've been weak, and sometimes I've done things I'm not proud of. I occasionally masturbate to cartoons.

Still, I think I'm pretty good. I'm afraid of fighting, but I am brave enough to stand up, even so. I feel terrible when I see people crying, or getting humiliated. I am adventurous, funny, and clever. Except my stupid laugh and flabby skin, I think I'm at least average looking. I'm pretty passionate and embrace life. Sometimes, I am a god-damned hero in the sack. I am a good mechanic, welder, carpenter, programmer, artist. I'm not a sports guy, but I'm fairly athletic. I am funny as hell when I have the exact right level of nervous energy. I can spend an entire month by myself and never get bored or lonely. I don't hurt people very often, and generally would rather they hurt me than the other way around. I've helped out a lot of people in trouble. A couple of times I even had knives and guns pulled on me when I did. I feel good when I make people happy, especially when they don't know how hard I worked to do it.. Did I mention how sometimes I'm a hero in the sack? I think that's kind of important.

Anyways, so when I ask about that, or wonder, it's always the same: “You have to love yourself first.” Bullshit. I already do. What they are doing is gas-lighting. Telling me I feel something I don't. Something I can't prove or argue or demonstrate. And they do it when I'm in pain. Desperate for an answer, and so crushed I try to convince myself and capitulate. So willing to change, so I can find that meaning and importance and connection, that I'm an imbecile, as eager to please as Parsons in MINILUV. Just this slow-rolled Stockholm Syndrome.

“You feel what I tell you, not what you think”. And then I'm just dense or perverse if I disagree. And I'm left thinking I'm so crazy I don't even know myself or understand anything in the world. And the panic and incoherence in my thought just grows.

Two plus two equals five.

So I search and search for what's in me that I need to change, that I must hate so much I am broadcasting it to every stranger and clerk and waitress. I start to judge every foible as the possible culprit: “Is that why I hate myself? Is that? Is that? Is that?...”

It never ends. Well, it ended. I do love myself, mostly. That's not my problem, so don't put it on me. Don't project. If you don't love me, own it, don't make me responsible for what you feel about me. At least have that decency. Don't tell me I don't love myself because you don't have the courage or respect to say you don't love me. Don't make me bury myself in myself for months and years trying to fix your problem. Don't send me on a fool's errand. I think I got enough love for myself to tell you that.

See, loving myself isn't the problem. Not being loved is my problem. I've done some remarkable and stupendous and unique things in my life, and weathered storms you can't imagine. And I'm proud of that.

I want love, though. I got my own already. I want yours. Or maybe not yours, but some woman's. Maybe you're not her. I'm not unlovable to me, but I don't understand why I am to you. To all of you. I don't understand. Maybe I want to feel like I matter so much to some woman she is excited to face every day, or has contentment with life, and joy, and hope, and peace. Maybe I want to know a woman who says: “Knowing you has made it all worth it.” and knows I feel the same about her. Who looks in my eyes with the same stunned, awed expression as I have for her. Maybe I want affection. A friend. A partner in crime. Someone who walks into the house and knows she is loved because I've cleaned the place and supper is on, nearly ready for her arrival. Sex. Someone who wants to see all the parts of the world with me that aren't shit, or soulless commercial scum holes or tragic war zones. Who wants to go skydiving with me. Or have kids. Who thinks: “You are my man, and I want to have your baby.” Someone whom I can laugh with about all the stupid shit our kids do, or who can have a deep and loving conversation when we are worried about little Timmy or Sally or Adolf getting into drugs or country music or Poland. Whoever. Whatever.

Maybe I want to be held and stroked. Snuggled with. Lay around in bed sharing our little secret jokes. Shovelling the walk before you wake up so you can walk to the car in the morning without going through snow. Maybe I want to massage you or wrap myself around you. Or give you the space to take a Taxidermy or Spanish class at the local college or whatever. And who would love the crazy, wildly assembled chimera of a fox and raven you brought home when it's finished, inexpertly glued, so I can proudly exclaim “?que es esto?” (exhausting my own Spanish) and put it on the kitchen table and tell you how awesome you are, because I celebrate how much I love of the weirdness you've shown in you. Maybe I want to feel your hair and your skin and hear your laugh and snort. Maybe I want to watch you as you orgasm. Maybe I want to feel like I matter to you, and you matter to me, so everything else matters too.

Maybe that's so important to me, nothing else can hold a candle to it. All the other wonders of life are flat and grey beside that. Maybe I only have one life, and the life I want is being denied to me, for no reason I can understand. What I have acutely wanted to live, eagerly, every second for decades of my life. And the years just keep evaporating, week after week, year after year!

Maybe I'm getting older and older, and this life is running out. Maybe already my health is starting to fail. Maybe if someone loved me now, I have already lost so many vital years we could have had together, or it would be too late to take my kids on trips or walk my daughter down the aisle, or be a memory of a strong man for my sons or daughters. I do think I'm worthy of that. I do think I deserve to be loved. Why hasn't the fact I have wanted that and tried to find it for over forty years been enough to show I think I'm worthy of it? Why have I been denied being a part of the conversation of humanity?

Maybe I've tried for so many years, you start to just seem perverse and cruel. I don't see what's so bad about me, but you do. You'd rather fuck the guy who yells at you. Or have the baby of some other guy who was fucking you while his wife was at the hospital in labour. Or marry a guy who doesn't ask anything about you. Or thinks you're stupid. Who thinks you are just your body. Or who doesn't know what you like, or hits you, or cheats on you, or makes jokes about you to his friends. Or expects you to cook and clean and fuck and shut up.

What the hell is so bad about me you'd rather have that? It certainly isn't because I don't love myself.

So, anyways. I'm on a bridge now. It's not really a suicide-type bridge. If I jumped from here, the worst I would do would be cripple myself and look retarded. But I can make the jump fatal. It's cold, and I can see my breath. It's that perfect time of night, around four a.m. and there is that thick, heavy silence thrumming in the winter city air. Mostly, everyone is asleep.

I've got snot hanging from my nose. I've been crying pretty hard for quite a while. It's mostly run its course, though. That's another thing I don't really like about me. I think I look dishonest when I cry. That thought usually makes me stop crying unless I'm alone.

I have a nice half inch rope. I had pulled out a pencil and Newton's formulas to figure out the right diameter of rope so it wouldn't break on me. I tied a noose in one end, a proper thirteen turn noose. No point doing things half-assed. They should really have a sense of importance, since nothing else will. I've looked it up and found out the right length to do a proper “long-drop” hanging. If the rope is too short, I'd just suffer needlessly, and thrash around like an idiot suffocating for a couple of minutes and turning my face black and swollen before I die. Too long, and I'd decapitate myself. That just seems too dramatic and messy for whoever is unlucky enough to have to deal with the whole shebang. I feel kind of bad about it, but not that bad. They've seen worse than what I'm going to do. I'm nothing if not considerate. That's what I'm telling myself, anyways. I picked four a.m. so no kids would see it. I'll be found by some poor drone on her way into the office early, or one of the regulars for the first of the daily rush: invariably cleaning women, nurses, and tradesmen.

I tie a bowline around the rail with the other end of the rope. It's apparently one of the strongest knots, and it's one of the cleanest. I can tie one in about a second. If I have a favourite knot, it's the taut-line hitch, or maybe the half hitch, since that reminds me how my Dad used to say: “Grandpa always said: ' two half hitches can hold the devil.'” The bowline is definitely up there, though. It's sort of my go-to knot.

I imagine the police photographer photographing my nice neat bowline and noose, and how I placed the noose appropriately, and how he would nod in appreciation with how I had done this all properly, and how I had done it as cleanly as it's possible under the circumstances. How he would see how I had the sureness to not over-knot things, and trusted my own knowledge of and skill with the rope.

The noose is around my neck but it's hidden by my jacket. I am having one more smoke. I sort of freeze in abject guilt, like I just got caught spray painting a swastika or something, as some guy walks by. I'm leaning against the rail, though, so he can't see the rope. Still, I'm nervous about him stopping me. I stopped this exact thing in pretty much this exact spot ten years ago. The guy was a drunk Vietnam vet, and he was bawling quite a bit. Everyone was just walking by, except one guy struggling with him and trying to also dial his cellphone. I came up and told the guy to make the call and I'd hold the old guy. I convinced him to just sit on the ground in the slush and dirt with me as we waited for the cops. He started to get up at one point and I just said: “It will get better, brother.” I was lying and didn't believe it, though, but he clearly wanted to believe and sat down with me again. The cops were kind of rough and were having a hard time with him. He was struggling quite a bit. One cop asked me to come up and undo the guy's backpack straps as they kept him pinned to the railing. I walked away after, hoping the guy could maybe find some happiness, but I didn't think it was likely. I might have even been cruel in stopping him. Life is shit.

Anyhow, he was kind of dumb, and trying it in the middle of the day. I'm mostly alone. I mutter a few lines of poetry I like for this moment:

“I'm Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,

Who never knew a dame

From youth time on and would to God

My Dad had done the same.”

Normally I hate Thomas Hardy. Return of the Native was a real let down. Holden Caulfield was wrong about that, although I probably would have liked Eustacia Vye, too.

“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.”

Always loved Eliot.

“As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little...

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrow....”

Ulysses means quite a bit to me, but I might not be able to kill myself if I recite the whole thing. Those lines always make me want to just say “fuck it”, though.

“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light...”

Not that one. Nothing by Thomas. I'll end up alive if I recite anything by Thomas or Yeats for sure.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Better.

I snug the noose around my neck and centre the knot just behind my left ear. There are traditions to think of. I'm feeling kind of dreamy and asleep. My arms are starting to feel a bit like paralysed wood. I light another cigarette and then toss it. I realize I'm stalling. I kind of wail a bit and look up and breathe in the cold air deeply.

“I wish someone would have loved me!” My voice is over-loud and warbling pretty badly. I sound like I have a speech impediment. I suck up the snot violently and climb over the rail in a trance.

I love myself, but I find this world intolerable without being loved, too. I need it as desperately, as acutely, and as urgently as I need air. And if I break occasionally, willing to destroy everything I am to end this suffocation, gasping for air in this water-boarding of life, don't be surprised at that. I think you understand. It's not that hard.