Dear Quirine,

Thank you very much for your reply to my post. I’m strangely happy when people understand what I’m trying to say. I mean, I don’t want anyone to feel that way, but I’m also aware that everyone carries their struggle.

The thing I find weird with self-love is that it’s so essential, as you said, and it should probably be instinctive…I mean, it’s a matter of survival. Yet none of use seems capable of it. I’m particularly bad at this. Everyone around me knows that; I’m a rather self-hating individual. It’s not even active self-hate. It’s not something that I’m trying to show to others; there’s no rebellion there. It’s just very obvious. I appear joyous and confident to the outer world, like, very confident, but everyone who knows me is shocked by the way i treat myself. You’re so right about it being a practice. You truly have to set self-love as a goal, daily, to try and get some of your self-esteem back. There’s this artist I love who once said: “there is no success. You have to start again, every day”, and I think there is so much truth to that.

As for the story, it’s here: https://tinybuddha.com/topic/guilt-guilt-and-guilt-post-breakup/

A long time ago! Thanks again 🙂