Is it possible to fall out of love with a person, even though you’ve known them and grown with them for years? I am deeply worried that I’ve fallen out of love with myself. I was reading a quote about self-love from a motivational app I’ve been using over the past week. The quote hit me funny. It argued that you need to love yourself first and my gut reaction was, do I? I am not entirely sure, and I think that not being sure is just as good as saying no. I can honestly argue that I love my partner more than I love myself. I can also argue that I am a slave to my habits and I hate that about myself. I feel like an automaton, ceaselessly moving through the motions and not feeling much for many of them. This is not to say I don’t find joy in moments, but as my partner is quick to point out, ‘moments aren’t a life.’ So, what then?
I think the question of self-love starts with why. Why do we love ourselves? Are we simply supposed to? What do we love about ourselves? For me I find that everything that brings me joy about myself is fading. More specifically, my ability to do these things and feel these things within my own body is fading and I am doing next to nothing to fix the problem. There is another quote that popped up on the app, courtesy of Wayne Dyer (I don’t know who he is), “With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.”
It occurs to me that time and again I’ve chosen obstacle over opportunity in a way that is greater than a mindset but more of an excuse making–a way of letting things happen over and again. I’ve decided that growing old means fading and weakening and I haven’t allowed my self to experience the ‘growing’ in growing old. This too is a mindset. I think this is part of why I’ve fallen out of love with myself. I used to appreciate challenge and change. Now I’m just a scared old man hiding from it as I fade into nothingness.
This is not the way.