Swallow

Someone asked me last week if I loved myself. She asked it making the assertion that no one can love another person more than they love themselves. I agree with that statement, though it troubles me. I like to think that it is possible to truly love someone as a person in my condition. I don't know if I've ever been asked that question before.

I came into the world helpless and distracted. I wouldn't say that I loved myself, but I certainly paid a lot more attention to me. Everything was injustice, and no one could possibly understand how bad I felt. How strange it seems to me now that I could "know" everyone else's experience in a glance and compare, declaring myself Miss Universe in the pity pageant of all time.

I was fat, and socially awkward. I also didn't like the sound of my own voice. These were my qualifications.

Sometimes I really wish that time wasn't a continuum. That the past didn't progress into the present, and then on into the future. Perhaps if there were some other way, some new method of organization for the universe, I might one day wake up and be completely changed. If I could only be just someone, anyone else. 다시, as my students say when they make a mistake. I made a lot of mistakes, and not any of the cool mistakes. I've made loser mistakes, the kind that reveal true character and fault to the world in an astoundingly unspectacular way.

Know thyself.

I heard these words in college, and felt like it was some grand calling in life. If I knew who I was, then somehow I would be happy. I suppose this could have been the opening page to some part of my life, but it became more of a bookmark. It was a stopping point for blame. I couldn't be truly happy until I knew myself, and I didn't want to know myself yet. I wanted to know the me that I had plans to become.

I am post-college, in a singularly literal sense. I am not who I was, though I can't be too sure, because I didn't take the time to know that person, and I am still not quite willing to introduce myself to me yet. I've come to accept the fact that I can only put into the world what I find put into myself. My heart is filled to the brim with the pictures, word, and songs of other people. I think I love them, but how could I, when I use their creations to explain why my words, stories and pictures aren't good enough?

Love thyself.

All of my prayers seem the same these days. They're like diagnostics. A question of-

How am I doing?

Am I better?

Look at all that I have accomplished. Is it enough?

Will I be better in time for you to be proud of me?

I lost 70 pounds, I can play the guitar a little. I had two poems published in a magazine that Mike made. I've held hands with a girl (more than once, actually). I speak a little Korean, and I only pick my nose when I'm absolutely sure no one is looking. I'm better, aren't I?

Would someone love me if I was just a little bit better?

"This is my commandment, that you love one another, that your joy may be made complete."

Love thyself.

Truth be told, I'm afraid to love myself, because if I love myself, then maybe I won't ever change. What if I'm always this way? I don't know how to love myself and still admit that I have a long way to go. I've come so far, and I am someone else to the best of my knowledge, and I have accomplished everything by hating myself. I had hoped that now that I am a more respectable person, I could start to love again, but everything is built on the foundation of that phrase that I've programmed into my head.

You aren't good enough.

There's no such thing as good enough, I know that. Love is hard work, but it's not a job, because you can't earn your pay. I feel like I've put myself on time out, and now I'm crawling back to God, holding the sorely patched pieces of my identity in front of me, begging.

Has it been enough time? Did I learn my lesson?

When God looks at me, I think I find only a puzzled expression on his face, and his only response:

What were you doing?

Did you think that I put you there?

Swallow.

I think that God wants me to love myself. The myself that I am, and not the myself that I'll be. When I say love, I don't mean that I believe in hippie Jesus who is referenced by philosophy students and is compared to Ghandi and John Lennon. Sometimes I forget which of them said "all you need is love," and which said "if you love me, you will do as I command." I don't believe in hippie Jesus with catchphrases.

Can't we all just get along?

The world as it stands simply does not make sense if that's what God is. I believe in a world where people are starving and dying, scattered and frightened, without hope, and still God is love. I believe in the difficult love, the frustrating, hard to swallow kind of love. Hippie Jesus only loves as a concept. He cannot love you while seeing your flaws, because they would make him wrong. You can agree with hippie Jesus all you want; his love can not change anything about you, because it would have to occupy a considerable distance.

I want to believe again in a love that has dirty hands, because it touches everything. I want to take a bite of something and chew on it, never knowing if I'll be big enough to swallow.

The foundation of my life up to this point has been loathing and self-hatred. I who claim to be a child of God. How can I love, when I am only motivated by hatred, screamed at a mirror daily? I swear, I thought it wouldn't hurt anyone else.

I don't want anyone to tell me that I am good enough. I won't exchange one lie for another. The house must be rebuilt if it is to have a new foundation.

Eat me alive.

Every doorway I left unlocked, every window open far too wide. Every fixture, appliance, book I never read. I will be loved as something that is not good enough.

다시. Time to start again.