I can’t say that I 100% achieved self-love, but I can say that I’ve fully accepted myself for who I am, autism and all. Whoever said nobody can love you until you love yourself was full of shit; we are not unlovable just because we don’t love ourselves and sometimes people who’ve been through trauma need to learn how to be loved through demonstration.
I know because I’ve felt like love was conditional through much of my childhood. Maybe I’ll be loved if I do this, that, and the other thing. I didn’t know what unconditional love felt like until I met my partner, so how was I supposed to love myself unconditionally if I never knew what it was? It’s quite a journey, especially if you’re starting at a disadvantage.
Now that I’m a parent, I feel like I’ve cheated. I created a little human who is biologically wired to love me and sometimes I still don’t feel like I deserve this innocent person’s unconditional love, like I’m not worthy, like they deserve a neurotypical parent.
Shut up because that’s the depression talking and depression only wants to kill you.
I grew up as an undiagnosed autistic, which meant that I had neurotypical expectations placed upon me, which meant that I consistently failed to meet those expectations. People who feel like failures all the time tend to get depressed, and I’ve felt like a failure almost my entire life until I was diagnosed at the age of 29.
Many autistics don’t get diagnosed until way later than that and many more don’t get diagnosed at all. I consider myself privileged in that regard, but I digress.
Being autistic is not bad, neither is being disabled. It sucks that society is using capitalistic value to determine the worth of a human life, of our life. This is how society is systemically ableist. The world sees dependent people as a drain on others, especially in Western culture where independence is highly valued.
If our own parents can’t love us in our entirety, how are we supposed to love ourselves? What role model do we have to teach us to love our autistic and disabled selves when our own parent says they love us but they don’t love everything about us?
So if you grew up not knowing how to love yourself, it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay if you need someone to love you before you learn how to love yourself. I did.
