This week is Mental Health Awareness Week at HC Western Ontario. Join the conversation with #HCWesternTalks.
Dear Reader,
In honour of mental health week I wanted to write you a little love letter. I wanted to tell you that you should never think you are unlovable.
You can’t let others rule our emotions, or determine your self-worth. I know it’s tempting. After two, three, four, five, six… heck even after one failed relationship it becomes easy to blame romantic failure on being unlovable, but I promise you aren’t.
I know this might be hard for some of you to believe. I know this is especially hard to believe when relationship after relationship, person after person, bashes your self-esteem into the ground.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a normal way to feel. Feeling this way doesn’t mean you’re weird, or anti-feminist, or whatever other bad thing you might think yourself to be.
I mean, when nothing seems to go right and you’re the only common factor, how could you not think it’s you? How could you not think romantic failure is your fault? How could you not think you’re unlovable?
Here’s why:
Think of the last person you were with (if they were great, think of the last bad person you were with).
I’m guessing that even if you love(d) them, in some ways you probably hate them, and if you’re being honest you might just hate yourself for having tolerated them, for having been with them.
Maybe looking back makes you feel dumb. They were awful, or dumb, or worse — maybe they weren’t even funny, yet they still broke your heart, or hurt you or whatever.
Awful as they were, you had feelings for them once, maybe you even loved them.
This awful, horrible, not-even-funny person.
You loved them, so obviously they aren’t unlovable, and if this terrible person is lovable, where the heck do you get off thinking that you aren’t?
I guess what I’m trying to say is please cut yourself a break. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself about the mistakes you’ve made. Be kind to yourself about being lovable or worth it.
I know you might not feel like the most confident person, and honestly you’re not always going to be the hottest person in the room. That’s life. What I’m trying to tell you though is this: There’s always going to be someone prettier or smarter or funnier, but honestly whether there is or isn’t it really doesn’t matter.
I’m sure there were people in the world (somewhere in the world) that would beat your ex in one category or another. That didn’t make them unlovable. It just meant you didn’t love them because they were the smartest person ever, or People Magazine’s sexiest man or woman alive (which they weren’t).
Instead, you loved them for other things. Little things or dumb things like the way they laughed or the way they said your name.
My point is a bunch of terrible people and bad relationship should never make you believe you are fundamentally inherently unlovable. You can be ugly or pretty, smart or dumb, funny or not; you can be anything and still be lovable.