I love you but, I love me more...

As if January was your test run to starting the New Year, it’s never too late to make a change. In 2020, we’re choosing to recognize when, where, and with whom our toxic relationships lie and finding the strength to say, “You know what, I love you but, I love me more.”

Maybe like me, you are TIRED of making excuses for the way people treat you; tired of saying, “Oh, he or she didn’t mean it, they had a rough childhood, they don’t know how to adequately love me because of how they were raised. We’re just going through a rough patch,” and the excuses we make go on and on! How draining! Too often we find ourselves caught up in this vicious cycle that we equate to LOVE.

Does love truly hurt us? Does love require us to sacrifice so much of our energy that those with whom we are giving it to, can never seem to replenish? I think not.

If you’re like me, then sometimes you feel beholden to individuals with whom letting go of should be easy. I found myself asking myself, “What benefit do I receive by having this person in my inner circle? What does my day to day and week to week look like without this individual in my life? And what impact do we have on one another; is this a give and take relationship, or am I giving, giving, giving?”

If you find that your answer to that question is that you’re the one giving, giving, giving, then maybe the relationship and its benefit to you needs more evaluating.

But why? Why am I writing this op-ed? Why is this conversation so necessary? On Valentine’s Day, I read a story to my students about love. The story was about a family heirloom that had been passed down three generations. I choose to read this type of story to my students because I wanted to show them that love is not only expressed between couples, but that it is familial, and that it is also the root of friendships.

After reading the book, we discussed our own family traditions and shared how we choose to love one another. We then did an exercise where we read about the top 10 qualities of being a person who is admired. Through this activity, we looked at traits that made a person admirable, answered a few self-reflection questions about ourselves based on those 10 traits and then wrote about who we admire most and why.

I am always a fan of self-reflection activities because guess what, sometimes we can be the toxic person in someone else’s story. What level of power and maturity we have reached when we can recognize within ourselves, that we ARE the change that needs to be made!

We must right our wrongs too and hold ourselves accountable for those wrongs when they arise as well. How vain would we be to think that we are never in the wrong, always right, and that everyone and everything around us is the problem. Don’t be “that” person.

Finding the strength to say, “I love you but, I love me more,” comes after reflection. It comes after we do the work of looking at ourselves, how we interact with those close and distant to us, how those interactions have shaped and molded the person that we are, and how those relationships impact our lives.

While researching this topic for my podcast, Juice and da Squeeze, I stumbled upon this article from hackspirit.com titled, “How to love yourself: 15 steps to believing in yourself again.” I really loved the list because many of the steps were steps that I need to take, and many of which I wanted to share.

Number one emphasized that you’re the MOST important person in YOUR universe! I thought that was so powerful because too often, we put ourselves on the back burner with excuses such as, “Oh but the kids need this, my husband or wife needs that. I don’t have the time because so and so needs me for x, y, z.” Sometimes, we must take back our time, and place ourselves at the top of our hierarchy of needs.

Number two asked the question, “How do you actually treat yourself in the big scheme of things?” This is such a legit question. Hell, sometimes I find myself trying to figure out when was the last time I got myself a pedicure or slept for an entire day to replenish all the energy that I pour into my family and work.

Number three said we need to accept that pain because let’s be real, endless optimism is bullshit. We’re not happy all the time, we hurt ourselves, people hurt us, and we need to take a moment to accept that so we can then do the necessary work that leads to healing.

And I’m going to stop at number 4, my favorite, but I encourage you to look at all 15 because each of us are at our own stage of growth and development. But number 4 said to find and open your heart to reconciliation by accepting your own flaws. What stuck out the most to me from this step, was that it said to trace your path from childhood to now. This is so powerful because often, we don’t recognize the power that our childhood and past experiences have over us. How things that happened to us 15 years ago still affect that people who we are today and the way we respond in relationships.

Loving yourself more is work. I repeat, loving yourself more is work. But if we can get up every morning to go to work for a paycheck, we can do the work of loving ourselves, becoming our best selves, removing the worst parts of ourselves, and severing the ties that leave us depleted. In 2020, we have the courage to say, “You know what, I love you but, I love me more.”

-Nerra Muhammad February 16, 2020