Romancing the Self: Rekindling the Love that I Forgot to Kindle

It’s women’s history month! What better way to celebrate than by talking about self-love?

Back when I posted my upcoming topics on Facebook (yes, I’m on there with a wee baby page that desperately needs more likes), I was following a whim. Rather than fret all week about which topic to cover next time, I decided to talk about something that I was currently doing. It seemed like a good idea. It was fun and lighthearted but an important concept, nonetheless.

Plus it was relatively easy . . . or so I thought it would be at the time . . . and I could use an easy topic while I was going through my post-Emilie-Autumn-concert high/minor obsession (okay major obsession).

So I patted myself on the back for thinking of ahead and let myself fall back into following as much of Emilie and her inmates as I could on the Internet. In the process, I stumbled across one of the inmate’s blog post about writing love letters to yourself and, from there, the Contessa’s post about dating yourself.

Oy!

Talk about synchronicity!

Yes, I suppose this could just be a topic trend right now, so all you logic monsters (ahem, my partner) can just relax. But I’m allowing myself to find a deeper meaning in the repetition because even though the idea of courting myself has floated around in my mind for a little over a year now, I haven’t been practicing it.

I thought I had started the practice last year, when on International Women’s Day, I bought myself my first “gift.”

Not that I’ve never gotten myself something before, but this was the first one that felt like I was getting myself something that I would normally expect another person to give to me—a rose. I was driving by a florist’s shop, already heady with the energy of the full moon and the excitement of celebrating women, when I suddenly decided that I wanted a rose for that day.

Part of me scoffed at the idea. You can’t buy yourself flowers! It’s like making yourself a birthday cake or giving yourself a Valentine’s Day gift!

But I really wanted that flower.

So I made a u-turn and went back to the florist. I took my time selecting the flower that I wanted, thinking about how each shape and color made me feel, until I felt certain that a pale lavender rose seemed to fit the occasion just perfectly.

I was giddy by the time I left the shop. I don’t even remember what I did to celebrate the rest of the day even though it was an all-day celebration. All I remember is buying myself that rose and feeling so fucking special because of it!

And I decided that this whole romance thing would need to be part of my life—I was finally to the place where I treasured myself enough to want to do it!

But…

Then a year passed before I thought about romancing myself again.

Sure, I had alone time and self-care times, even times of honoring the scared feminine within me (remember the yoni party!).

But it wasn’t a romantic encounter in any way.

Then last Friday, I was stressed. My partner and I had been almost too busy to even say hi to each other, and I was lonely. I knew I needed to unwind, and I was disappointed over every new occasion that seemed to get in the way of that.

Then it occurred to me: Take yourself on a date! You were supposed to be doing that anyway!

At first it felt kind of pathetic, planning a romantic evening when I had nothing else to do—almost as if I were crying for attention. But it wasn’t about that at all. I even got offers from friends that day to go out, but I turned them down because I actually wanted to have this evening with myself.

The evening really couldn’t have been more cozy. I cooked myself a gourmet meal, broke open an expensive bottle of wine, lit some candles and incense, dimmed the overhead lights, and picked out a favorite movie. The food was delicious, but I think eating it would have been special even if it tasted like crap. There was something about knowing that I was doing all of this for me that made it all feel magical (especially when you consider that I rarely even cook if I’m not expecting anyone else to eat with me). The night continued with my homemade spa–even more candles and a vanilla bath. There was no time limit, no expectations, just me and me doing whatever we wanted.

Okay, so enough about my night. Anymore from here will either get inappropriately awkward or boring (if it’s not boring already). The point is that I reminded myself of how precious it is to woo myself. Of course I like it when someone else does it to me, but I’d forgotten how special I could make myself feel. And in a way, this whole self-date thing is almost more important than dates with my partner because it is the foundation of my being able to appreciate and accept my partner’s love. Loving myself enough to say, “You deserve this. I want to give it to you,” adds a deeper dimension to my relationship with my partner. There’s very little from the Bible that I hold onto in my current beliefs, but the whole “love your neighbor as yourself” bit is still one of my favorite mottos because it reminds me that all love stems from self-love.

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
I always get a little bit ecstatic when I find a way of blasphemously turning a phrase once associated with God onto myself.

I’m a complex being. I’ve learned that sometimes I need to be mothered, sometimes I need to be coached/pushed, and—sometimes, I just need to be seduced by myself.

So this March, like last March, I’m proposing a courtship to myself, and this time, I don’t intend on letting myself down. I think I might even work on starting to write myself a love letter, like Veronica instructs. But even if I can’t bring myself to do that right away, I can plan in a date night with myself from time to time to keep the romance alive. Love takes work, and that includes self-love.

 

The Space Between: The Unglamorous Reality of the After-Victory

I love dystopian novels. There’s a surprising familiarity in them, and when people wonder about my experiences within the IFB, I find it easy to reference dystopian novels as a means of painting a fairly accurate picture. They help me to understand some of the tactics that have been used against me. But more importantly, they give an imaginative out to the tension of having lived through a minor version of that myself.

Classically, most dystopians don’t end well. Back when 1984 was hitting the scenes, it was part of the genre to have a non-victorious ending. But as they’ve taken over the young adult bookshelves recently, authors have pushed those classic boundaries and changed the endings. Thus we get The Hunger Games in which the rebellion, however small, is successful (though the ending doesn’t promise the success is permanent)—or Birthmarked, in which the protagonist at least manages to escape and sets out to find a better society.

Most of these new-ending books and movies reach the victorious point and then stop, because in terms of plot it’s a good stopping point. A few go on to show the “after-victory”—either a glimpse into how the protagonist’s life is going to be now that the oppressor is overthrown or a whole new book on how the new society works.

Few show the after-victory accurately.

We like to think that the hard part of surviving is the actual surviving. In reality, I think the after is far harder to survive. The event may end—in the case of the novel, the abusive rulers may be overthrown—but for the mind and body of someone who’s been through hell, that’s not really the end. Life doesn’t pick up where it left off. Life doesn’t start over anew. There’s so much left over. (To be fair, I actually think Susanne Collins did a pretty good job of showing how surviving trauma affects a person’s ability to carry on with “normal” life, but I’ve heard her criticized for killing the victory high because of that as well.)

It’s not that there isn’t happiness, success, or renewal.

It’s just that it’s a much less glamorous process than novels or movie plots tend to show.

I could go on to try to explain it, but the whole point of this post is that I’ve finally found a song that does that for me!

I already love Emilie Autumn for the raw way she taps into the pain of trauma. There’s no doubt she’s been through some pretty horrendous stuff, and she uses music to document her journey. It’s uncomfortable and shocking in the way that trauma poetry should be (because, let’s face it, there’s nothing pretty or comfortable about trauma, so why should someone diminish that for the sake of an audience?) But I think I fell in love with her just a little bit more when I heard the last song on her new album: “One Foot In Front Of The Other.”

How vividly she captures that space after the victory! The confusion. The sense of being lost. Not knowing what to do next. Not even knowing if you know who you are. The reality that when your whole world becomes the enemy that you have to fight, especially if it’s the only world you’ve ever known, your identity doesn’t get excluded from the destruction.

Sometimes it’s very easy to feel like I’m wasting my life away with this whole healing business. I’m so focused on trying to overcome the past that I wonder when I’m going to get down to the actual business of living. When am I going to be free of the emotional, financial, and practical effects of growing up in a terrorizing religion or attending Bob Jones University? When will my “victories” move from the silent ones like getting rid of nightmares, setting boundaries, neutralizing a trigger, or overcoming the terror of an internalized doctrine to the more visible ones like getting my Master’s, buying a house, publishing a memoir, or starting a support group for other victims? I see people my age, so confident in who they are and what they’re doing, and I wonder how much time I’ve lost and will still lose in trying to find myself amidst the rubble of abuse and mind-control.

Then Emilie, who seriously must be the Goddess of little girls who survived, comes along and reminds me that those invisible successes are just as important as the visible ones. It’s okay to have days where I don’t save the world or even myself. I don’t have to know exactly who I am, where I’m going, or what I’m supposed to do. It’s enough to just keep moving forward a step at a time. One step may not seem like a lot, but it’s the start of every journey and the means to every destination.