Self love is messy.

Moments with a crystal selling rockstar.

Loving myself used to feel like a fight. Like I had to shove the needs of others aside just to remember my own.

On a scorching afternoon, I met someone who reminded me of that struggle.

He sat on the side of a well traveled path with a table full of crystals. Surrounding him were the types of buzzing restaurants that only pop up after gentrification has taken root.

He was kind and his smile was soft. But his life had not been.

“My motto is ‘F*ck everybody,’” he shared. “You have to take care of yourself. You can’t expect anybody else to.”

His story was full of hard edges and lived truths that made his words feel like an assertion. One that I had no right, or desire, to dispel.

As I thought about this stranger’s motto, I remembered how self-love had been framed for me. As something indulgent. A luxury. Even a sin.

But Audre Lorde said it plainly, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation…” Just as Lorde had to learn that there was a difference between “stretching” and “overextending” oneself, so too did I. ¹

Maybe “f*ck everybody” isn’t the gentlest way to approach love. But if that’s what it takes for some of us to start caring for ourselves, so be it.

With time, we may learn that loving ourselves doesn’t come at the cost of loving others or being loved by them. It fuels it.

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1. A Burst of Light: Essays by Audre Lorde