The Bitter, Benevolent Truth

Hard to say. Even harder to swallow.

Photo by Suguru Kagamifuchi

You want the truth?

The truth, in this moment, is that I hate myself. I hate every little thing about myself.

A few days ago, I wrote, I crave nothingness. And I do.

Yet I hate being nothing, too.

It’s hard to love a person who does not exist.

You may think I’m in the midst of a depressive episode; hence all the self hate. But sometimes, depression sharpens my vision. Helps me speak the deepest, dirtiest truth.

It’s a struggle to be a mom. To do my job. To smile.

It’s a struggle to breathe sometimes. To look in the mirror.

To pretend. To pretend. To pretend.

It isn’t sexy to say you hate yourself. It probably (hopefully) isn’t a forever feeling, too. But if I write it, in some ways, I immortalize it. I cannot look away. Pretend I never felt it. These words will always exist to remind me.

I read through Substack posts full of humor, wisdom, kindness, and critique. Writers sharing their advice, insights, and hard-won truths. And I think it’s great. I do it, too.

But sometimes all this abundance of advice reinforces the idea that there’s some kind of formula to it all. To life. To success. To happiness.

I don’t think there’s a formula at all. Different things work for different people. Strategies that work in one stage of your life, won’t work in others. Life is just messy. And we all need an anchor. Maybe the strongest among us have learned how to fly, how to thrive, how to manifest. Good for them. Truly.

The truth is, I just want ease. And a whole lot of love. I’ve never been ambitious, in the career sense of the word. I’ve always craved connection and safety. But the world tells us these are things you have to work for anyway; they won’t just fall into your lap. So you work hard, you strive, you stretch yourself thin trying to attain your desires.

Nothing materializes. Nothing goes as planned. Life turns to shit, one attack after another, with brief periods of respite or mild pleasure in between.

And then one day, without warning, it really does fall into your lap.

When that happens, you don’t even have the capacity to enjoy what you’ve been granted. You withdraw, perform, feel unworthy.

What is the point of all this ambition, this desire, this craving, if you don’t feel worthy of what you want to begin with?

I wonder if somewhere, somehow, self hate became my anchor. And that’s why it’s been so hard to release it. You can’t release an anchor unless you’re ready to replace it with another, or unless you’re ready to get pummelled by the wind and waves.

Maybe this is why I crave nothingness. Because if I’m nothing, I don’t need an anchor anymore, and this self hate will disappear.

But so will I.

And so I do the only thing I can. I put one foot in front of the other. I pick up my pen to write: I AM. Isn’t that all we’re really doing? Using our voice to prove we exist and we matter. We have something of value to offer.

Even if we don’t get the likes or follows. Even if what we write is sub-par, at best. Even if we’re writing in circles, like the doodles we drew as kids in the margins of our notebooks. Utter nonsense. Nonsense that declares, I AM.

Or maybe writing is my anchor after all. And at a time when I wasn’t holding fast to that anchor, the self hate, like a huge tidal wave, knocked me out for weeks. Making me hear voices. Hallucinate pain.

There’s a big gash upon my heart, where the ocean rocks must have hit me. A difficulty to breathe from the partial drowning.

But I’m here.

I’m here.

I AM.