Self-Sacrifice
I have always struggled with the idea of self-love. I have heard a lot of people, much of my life, say this phrase: "You have to learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else." And pretty much every time I heard that, I went, "Well, that's just absolute garbage." Because guess what? I love everyone, all the time, a whole freaking lot. But myself? Mmm. Not so much. It's not that I have ever actively, aggressively HATED myself. But taking care of myself has never been something I knew how to do. I knew how to show love to other people, and I knew how to care for them. But I never thought about applying the same principles to me. And then there was also the small matter of my personality. As a human, I am generally what I like to call progress-focused. I am never not trying to be better at something. This is, for the most part, a good thing, and I've tended to be pretty proud of it most of the time. In my brain, this was what made me good -- that