I was recently sat with my room mate, when i noticed she was rapidly storming through my facebook profile pictures and concentrating unusually hard for a fairly easy activity, when i asked her what she was doing she sat in pained silence for about 15 seconds before she says "you really love yourself don't you" as she signalled to the screen, the offending photo in question being that of me in an instagram friendly square selfie, not doing much other than a slight pout, my eyes wide. i felt the blood rush out of my face, i felt my eyes widen, i can only describe this as being physically mortified, i even stammered when i rushed to defend my reasonibly normal profile picture "of course not!!, you know, i mean, you know its just, its just a picture!!", i went into my bedroom feeling indignant, i mean how could she think that i LOVED myself, that i was vain and self obsessed, but most of all i was angry, at myself, for not being able to just say yes, to shrug it off, the say of course i love myself.

god forbid.

because over the years i have done some truly awful things to myself, i have drank to excess and poisoned my body, i have spent years starving myself so badly i passed out on stage during a year 10 performance of 'we will rock you'. i have eaten so much to the point of physical punishment, fisting clumps of food into my mouth, regardless of whether or not it was cooked or even edible, i have sobbed into fridge doors, i have punched my abdomen so visciously in the dark i have woken up with bruises covering my belly, i have snuck into toilets mid party and pulled a bobby pin from my hair to neatly scratch symmetrical lines and break the skin of my thighs, just enough to alleviate how it felt that night, not enough so that you'd know. i have gone too far, under the influence and attempted to open up my wrists with keys, i have ended up in hospital, i have for no reason, banged my head so hard against a brick wall that i have spent 3 days alone, sleeping in bed, concussed and making excuses to my employers that i cannot attend work because i have diarhrrea, because we all know that having runny poo is less embarrassing than admitting you felt so unbearably heavy and ugly in your life that you had to try to knock yourself out just to make it stop.

after years of bad behavior and a few months in the middle of nowhere to sober me up into good thinking patterns, i now have learnt the perfect art of romancing myself. i make an effort to take myself out for lunch and walk alone for hours, to go to exhibitions and to buy a new notepad i'll probably never write in, or eat gourmet donuts without crying about it, because to date myself means i don't have to balance my worth on another person.

to be able to say i love myself seems unthinkable and shameful, but i've made the vow that the next time says it, i'm going to say yes.