I Love You, Me. — the Rhinestone

In 2017, I had just moved to San Francisco and knew exactly two people in the city. I ended up inviting people I barely knew or didn’t even know to my birthday party. They actually showed up! It was nervewracking, but awesome.

In 2018, I had just had knee surgery four days prior. I was in pain, on crutches, and depressed as hell. I couldn’t do any birthday dances, and I didn’t have a party. But my housemates banded together and bought me a new sewing machine. It made me cry. It was amazing.

In 2019, I was so excited to really celebrate my birthday. A bunch of my friends decided to organize a party for me. Even more friends showed up to it. They brought drinks, food, and endless hugs. I couldn’t believe so many people came. I was having an amazing time. And then they did something I didn’t expect.

THEY GAVE ME A CARD. INSIDE WERE THE NAMES OF OVER 40 PEOPLE WHO TOGETHER HAD DONATED AND RAISED OVER $1200 TO SEND ME TO A DANCE CONVENTION IN MEXICO THAT I’D BEEN DYING TO GO TO THIS YEAR, BUT COULDN’T AFFORD.

I still can’t believe it happened.

For someone who has been struggling for the last five years with anxiety and depression, monumental self-worth issues, and generally no confidence… and struggling for the last year to build a dance business with no capital, going into debt every time I taught a class, and feeling generally hopeless about my dreams… I would have never seen this coming — this overwhelming amount of support and love from so many people.

And I never would have thought I’d be able to accept it.

As evidenced by the timeline above — I’ve had people in my life who had my back, who would tell me how they thought I was great, but I never believed a word of it. Over the years, depression and anxiety, abusive relationships and friendships, and bullying had affected my happiness in ways I couldn’t control. Instead of accepting these events and experiences as being out of my control and just part of life, I blamed myself. For years, repeated over and over — it was my fault, and I needed to be better… a better girlfriend, friend, dancer, student.

In a way, this gave me hope! It took the uncertainty out of life. It helped me to regain a sense of control. I just needed to be good enough. Things were going wrong in my life because I wasn’t good enough.

I believed this, as surely as I believe the sun will rise and set, as surely as I believe the world is round. No matter what good things people would say to me, it did no good. This belief was at the root of all my anxiety. Everything could be blamed on me not being good enough. My dance career will fail because I’m not good enough. My friends will leave me because I’m not good enough. I won’t find love because I’m not good enough. Even though rationally I knew that wasn’t true… It didn’t help much. This feeling of insufficiency was always at the back of my mind, like an annoying friend who wouldn’t leave me alone or shut the hell up.

I believed I was not enough. I had PROOF. All of the people who left me and abandoned me, all of the times I failed, those were all. my. fault.

So I thought I had to be perfect in order to find happiness. It tainted everything I did. The moment I did anything less than perfect — second place at a competition, a dance demo where I made a few mistakes, saying something awkward in a social setting — I would immediately feel insufficient, and then feel despair, because every moment I was less than perfect, happiness was just a little farther out of reach. Friends would continue to leave, romance would continue to elude my grasp, my business ventures would continue to stagnate…

ALL. MY. FAULT.

Trust me, I wasn’t satisfied existing this way. I was miserable, and I knew that I had to change what I was doing or risk going down a really dark path. Over the last year, I was doggedly working at changing that core belief, through therapy and a lot of thought and reflection, making myself rationally acknowledge the evidence that I may be good enough, but that irritating voice tearing me down in the back of my mind was still ever present. It was like trying to hear a whispered conversation over a waterfall.

Then towards the end of this last year, all at once, I was overwhelmed by a deluge of events that even my anxiety-clouded brain couldn’t hope to refute as anything other than evidence that I was good enough to deserve love. I had been slowly declining in terms of mental health — months of sleep deprivation and stress were catching up with me… and then I was being bombarded with love on all sides. Many instructors whom I idolize, telling me how much they loved my performances and social dancing. Friends literally in my face, forcing me to acknowledge how much they love me and care for me. Students sharing with me how much they love my classes and my work. Complete strangers complimenting me. Incredible people coming into my life and pouring their love into me when they barely knew me. It was happening with improbable frequency, and I wasn’t ready for it. Slowly but surely, it smashed my beliefs about myself to pieces.

All of a sudden I felt empty — QUIET — inside. That voice always telling me that at the end of it all I would fail and be abandoned was gone. It was strange, going about life without that doubt. It felt like a huge part of me was missing. I felt unsteady, for a little while. But my friends and family were there, filling that hole with love and kindness instead. I have reached a sense of acceptance. Acceptance of who I am, where I am in life, and the knowledge that even though my path will not be linear or predictable, that I can — and will — be happy.

It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. And the most important lesson was driven home:

I don’t need to do anything to be loved.

I had believed that if I wasn’t acting as everyone’s white knight, they would leave. I needed to be there for them physically, emotionally, and monetarily, or they were gone. And in some cases, even that was proven to not be enough. But this year, as I felt myself falling apart and I was desperate to fix it, I actually became a little selfish. I became a hermit. It definitely made me feel guilty, but the relief I got from doing it soon overcame that .I stopped going out when I didn’t feel like it, even if I knew people wanted me to go. I didn’t respond to messages as often. I started saving my empathy and pity and using it on myself.

And it turns out that when people really love you, you don’t need to do anything to keep their love. I fully expected to have few friends left when I emerged from my self-care hermitage. But people stayed! They reached out to check up on me, they kept inviting me to events, they gave me gifts without expecting me to have anything for them. For crying out loud, they organized a whole freaking party for me, crowdfunded a goddamn trip for me. I will never forget standing in front of that room full of people, feeling so overwhelmed by all the love.

It’s not perfect, of course. I still have doubts, confidence issues, moments of insecurity. But I have been shown that those imperfections do not make me unlovable. People love me in spite of those, BECAUSE of those imperfections, just as I love them.

And because they showed me how, I am finally learning to love myself.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” — 1 Corinthians 13.4

Originally published at https://therhinestone.co on January 20, 2019.