Love Thyself, Part 1

Love thy neighbor.
Most people know that verse, even if they never read the Bible it came from.
For people who are trying to live a "good" life, this verse can cause a lot of problems.
Love my neighbor? How can you expect me to love my neighbor, co-worker, ex, when they're a scumbag?
It's hard to "love" people we're not crazy about.  I've often felt that was asking way too much.  I've beat myself up trying to do that, and ended up angrier than before.
However, "Love thy neighbor" is only the first part of the sentence.
The entire sentence reads "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
That implies that however much we love ourselves is how much we're supposed to love our neighbors.
Which causes another dilemma.
It implies we are to love ourselves.
Now, if you have spent your life loving and taking good care of yourself, I envy you.
I, myself, only knew what it was like to spend my life not loving myself.
I don't blame anyone who passed that idea down to me.  I know it came from good intentions.
I was always taught that you were supposed to put other people first and do for them and everyone else and put yourself last and that would make you a good, thoughtful person.  It would even make you holy.  After all, martyrs let other people torture and kill them for the sake of putting other people and ideals first and they were considered good and holy.
With that idea in mind, I was even taught by a well meaning person teaching after school religious classes that, in order to be a really good person I was supposed to hate myself.
Yes, actually hate myself.
Looking back, I believe I can see the point he was trying to make.
However, in my little eight year old mind, I thought I was really supposed to hate myself.
After all these years, and I am not even going to tell you how many, many years ago that was, I remember standing on the steps of the church, rolling around that idea in my head, and telling myself, "ok, so I am supposed to hate myself.  Let me try that."
And then I proceeded to tell myself over and over again, "I hate myself.  I hate myself."
It's funny how, even as a little eight year old girl that idea sounded so foreign in my head.  It actually made me cringe because it truly sounded so awful.
But I practiced.
And practiced.
Trying desperately to do what I was supposed to do to be a "good" person.
It is funny, and I mean sad, how, decades later, when I was trying to teach myself how to love myself, that saying "I hate myself" sounded so normal, and saying "I love myself" sounded so foreign.
To be continued....