I like myself better in the past - and that sucks

I like myself better in the past – and that sucks

The endless cycle of self-hate and longing back to a time where...I also hated myself

Something strange we insecure humans tend to do is look back at past experiences and romanticize the shit out of them. We start missing a toxic ex, we want to go back to our messed-up childhood and we love the way we looked six years ago – when we hated ourselves just as much as we do now. But for some reason, we think things were better back then. We like our past selves better. And it sucks.

I like the person I was in the past way better than who I am in the present. Even though I hated myself back then, too.

Let’s be honest here: I abandoned this blog for a while. And the reason why isn’t pretty. Actually, I’m a little bit embarrassed about the reason why. I wrote about how my perfectionism always comes to bite me in the ass before, and maybe I’m just repeating myself, but the reason why I abandoned the blog is because I hated it.

I. hated. it.

And I can’t even remember why. Like: I love writing blog posts – well, most of the time, sure. But generally speaking I was really enjoying myself. But it was never good enough. When I looked at my blog after spending month after month working on it, perfecting it, trying to get it ‘ready’, I believed it wasn’t good enough. I believed it looked like a third grader had made it and people would never take me seriously. So, I lost track of it and acted like it didn’t exist.

Like I wasn’t paying over a hundred dollars a year to keep this website going *ahem*.

And the most amazing part? When I looked at it again, over a year later, I didn’t hate it. I actually really, really liked it. And that’s what I mean when I say that I like myself better in the past.

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Some of my art

Illustration with a colorful background. In a cloud is written "It takes time to become your unique, weird, cringy and happy self".

Illustration of different shapes. On top of the shapes is written: "when it comes to perfection, you set your own standard".

Illustration of a capibara sitting with wide, red eyes, holding his arms to his chest. Ghosts fly out from his arms and the words on the illustration read "Time to embrace my inner demons".

Illustration of a stomach with eyes and a little smile. Around the stomach are the words "I need you to listen to me", "Can anybody hear me?" and "hello?". The illustration reads: "Listen and trust your gut".

Illustration of a person, naked, on a swing. In the background is a rainbow in purple/pink colors and the clouds are pastel-colored. The person is surrounded by flowers. The drawing says: "I am always & fully myself"

Illustration of brown shapes in the background. This changes into some colorful shapes around the words "Imagine all the geat things you're missing out on trying to be normal".

Illustration of a turtle on a beach looking at the waves in the see in the distance. The illustration reads "I take small steps to get to where I am going".

Illustration that says "Do Not Silence That Weird Little Voice in Your Head". The text is in a cloud and the background is multicolored. Around the cloud are the words 'blablabla' repeated.

An illustration of the moon, smiling. Around it are clouds. In the moon the words are written: "If you feel overwhelmed, focus on your breating: in- and exhale control and feel the storm slowly settle".

Illustration with a colorful background. In the front there's a cloud with writing. It says: "I refuse to let another dream go to waste because I was too afraid what would happen if I let myself try"

Illustration with a pink background and the words "you can't hate yourself into loving yourself"

Illustration of a Queen playing card but instead of the regular icons, it says "no" and a red circle with a stripe. Around the card is barbed wire and it reads "Queen of Boundaries".

Colorful illustration with the words "Boundaries are about protecting yourself, not their feelings".

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Image: Freepik

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART… LÍKE MYSELF?

“You don’t know what you got till it’s gone” – we all know that saying, right? I hate that in my case, it’s accurate. Because whenever I’m “in the moment”, I can’t enjoy anything I do. But when I look back at my life five years later, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I didn’t like myself back then. And the most frustrating part of it all?

In that moment I don’t like myself either.

Every year is just me longing for the me I was five years ago. When I look through pictures of when I was 25, I think: “Why did I hate my body back then? Why didn’t I like those clothes? Why did I hate my hair? This is the prettiest I have ever looked.”

And I think those thoughts literally five minutes áfter I brought myself down yet again.

It’s so wild to me that I can reflect on the dislike I had for myself in the past, while actually liking past me without then immediately thinking: “maybe current me isn’t as bad as I make her out to be right now”. It’s wild to me that when I take some time away, when the past is the past and that part of me is ‘gone’, I can actually like who I was back then. But never in the moment? That just feels like such a waste of time.

I CAN ACTUALLY LIKE MYSELF

The same goes for the stuff I make: when I make art, I hate it. It looks like a child made it, it doesn’t look like serious artwork and it definitely doesn’t look like I should be promoting it online. But when I look back on it after a year or a even a few months, I realize that it is actually not that bad?

And don’t get me wrong: I like that I like my own stuff. I’m not angry that I do eventually appreciate the things I make. But it would be a lot more helpful if I actually liked those things right when I was doing them.

If I actually appreciated myself right when I needed it the most: in the present moment.

Because my dislike for myself becomes my current reality and that means I give it more meaning than it should have. I make it the lens through which I believe other people see me. I am convinced everyone thinks I suck as much as I believe I do.

But they don’t.

THEY LIKE MYSELF AS MUCH AS I DO

Because it actually isn’t about what I do. Not about how I dress, how I look or even how I act when it comes to my friends and family. This is about none of that outside stuff.

It is because it was never about the external stuff. Everything you tear yourself down about: the hair, the body, the clothes, the art… it was never about that. You don’t like yourself in that moment because you don’t like yourself.

Geez… I almost cried when I wrote that.

Cause that is a hard pill to swallow. I think it is easier to hide behind all the things we don’t like about ourselves instead of admitting that we actually do not like ourselves. It has nothing to do with the outside. It has nothing to do with just our hair or just our face. We do not like inhibiting our whole body and we do not like being who we are.

And that is really sad.

Especially when you consider that you will like yourself when you’re looking through holiday photo’s five years from now.

Wendy in a skirt and bra, looking at the camera while sitting in front of plants.

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HOW TO LIKE OURSELVES IN THE PAST ÁND FUTURE?

You are probably wondering: how do we fix this? How do we stop from romanticizing our past while underappreciating our present, setting us up for a future full of self-loathing?

Honestly, I wish I knew. I don’t have an answer. I wrote a blog about loving yourself and I’m still learning to live by those rules. But self-love is an ongoing process and confidence and self-appreciation don’t just appear out of thin air.

I just hope that, five years from now, there will be a moment when I can look back at this blog and think: “I remember that, after I wrote that, I felt really good about it.”

So far, so good.