I Forgive You

Everyone talks about self-love but no one ever wants to talk about self-forgiveness. But this is how all love begins, by realizing that you and the person you’re in love with are human, make mistakes, and still deserved to love and be loved. So when the person you’re talking about loving is -you- you need to be vulnerable and you need to forgive yourself. For what? Well, all of it. The truth is we all hold ourselves to a higher standard than we’d ever hold anyone else to.

You need to forgive yourself for not always being the person you want to be. You need to forgive yourself for messing up that interview all those years ago, for screwing up that opportunity you were given, for the relationship that somehow got away from you.

You can’t even have a conversation about self-love, or growing into who you’re supposed to be while you’re still holding onto all this stuff. If you’re still in that failed relationship, that moment when things went wrong, if you’re still going over what you should’ve said, and still blaming yourself and kicking yourself for the thing you did say, then you are not having the conversation you should be having with yourself. This is how the first few words of it go:

“I forgive you. I forgive you for being human. I forgive you for needing help. I forgive you for not always being 100%. I forgive you for not being perfect at your job and for not being further than you wanted to be. I forgive you for feeling insecure about whether or not you ever “make it” – and even if you don’t, even if your entire life is one big colossal failure, I forgive you for that. I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.

And now you can say, “I love you.”