“to love another
you must first love yourself
fore if you do not love yourself
you can not truly love
anyone else”
what a bunch of crap

the list of things
that i hate about myself
it is far bigger than the things
that i like about myself

i hate my hands
with the chewed-down fingernails
and the chronic tremors from anxiety
and so many different cocktails of medication
that has grown too big to
swallow dry anymore

i hate my mental illness
the auditory and visual hallucinations
that used to plague me constantly
and the depression
the anxiety
the insomnia
the ****** PTSD

i hate that i cut myself
for six years
and the urges still overwhelm
me more than is probably healthy

sometimes i hate that i failed
when trying to **** myself
four years ago

i am a freak in every
sense of the word
but that doesn’t bother me as much
as it used to
because all of my heroes are freaks too
and i still have so much love to give

because i grew up hating myself
raised between two abusive households
where it was made obvious that i
was not wanted by either parent
so i took that love that i was unable
to feel for myself and threw
it out into the world
for those that needed it more than me

i have so much love to give
because that is a terrible thing
to let go to waste
and i have more than enough
to go around

and i hate myself more days
than i love myself
but by giving that gift to others
before myself i think
and i know
that i am slowly learning how to
love myself again
and forgetting what it has felt like
to hate myself since i was
seven years old

so don’t you dare tell me
that i can’t love others until
i love myself
because that isn’t enough of
a reason to keep moving forward
and loving others first is how i
pick up the jagged edges
and smooth them down into something
that is soft once again