How I Learned to Love Myself
I began my summer by taking a 500-mile journey from St. Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain – mostly on foot. Backpacking through parts of Europe is something that had always sounded like a good idea, especially since I had never given myself the mental space to actually consider what a trip like that would look like. My childhood best friend called me up and said she was going alone and I invited myself – knowing very little detail about the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage we’d do. I knew the trip would be more of an emotional journey for me despite the physicality of walking anywhere from 7-17 miles a day for a month. For the six months prior, I had been in overdrive working two jobs, living in a temporary space and deciding whether to stay in Los Angeles or move somewhere back East following my divorce. I had a lot to work out in my mind and I figured a backpacking trip would be the best place to sort it all out. I anticipated bed bugs, blisters, sunburn, exhaustion and drinking wine. What I did not anticipate though, was that on this trip I learned how to love myself.
Being on the Camino forced me into myself in a way I had not experienced before. It stripped me down to the bare minimum (which for me included lugging around 2.5 liters of hair products in my backpack because of …curls). Walking for miles with no other intention than to take pictures and just be is a lovely notion. There was a solitude that only nature brings. We developed a cadence with our footsteps on dirt, mud, rock, and grass that mixed with the sound of birds, insects and the nothingness of a still summer day. It seemed like a good idea until I realized that the stillness solitude brings causes my skin to crawl after a few hours. I can rarely comfortably just be. The reason I am uncomfortable with myself often is that my mind is constantly running in multiple directions fast. I can take a single thought and run it into various nonexistent scenarios that result in panic induced anxiety. Most of those thoughts revolve around minor details in my life and how they will affect my future based on the inadequacy I feel.
Midway through the trip, the Camino broke me. I say the Camino did it because it’s easier to blame a 500-mile trail, than myself. I got into a fight with the man I was dating at the time and afterward, I realized there was a much bigger issue than what we were arguing on the phone about. The issue was me. My best friend let me blubber tears in her lap. I sobbed myself into a sleepless night. I spent some time in the creepy hostel bathroom crying alone in a stall. I felt hopeless. I cried harder over that man that week than I had over the severing of my marriage. But why? I feared that despite our chemistry and history he did not love me and that his rejection was a direct result of my defect.
It became very clear to me in those moments of sorrow that I had no idea how to love myself, all the while expecting it from other people. I felt disappointed and rejected often when in reality my interactions were just a reflection of the self-love I lacked. I realized that I was going to keep running into roadblocks with lovers and friends and anyone I came in contact with if I was not the person to set the love precedent in my life. Throughout the Camino de Santiago, I learned to love myself by making it a daily intentional practice. The practice of intentionally loving myself included checking in with my body to see what I was feeling. If it was sadness, I allowed myself to feel it. If I was tired, I made an effort to be easy on myself when I encountered difficulty. I learned to love myself by asking other people how they love themselves. I kept what resonated and left what did not. I learned to love myself by…
Being patient.
Being present.
Being silent.
Just being.
I learned to love myself by asking for help.
By admitting it’s okay to make mistakes.
By saying nice things about my body even if at the moment I don’t believe it.
By embracing my perceived flaws.
I learned to love myself by breathing.
I learned to love myself by demanding better, from myself and other people.
I learned to love myself at 28 while walking on a dirt trail through Spain. You can learn to love yourself right now wherever you are. It doesn’t matter how it just matters that you do.