In Which RuPaul Becomes My Spirit Guide.

“And remember...if you can’t love yourself...how the hellllll you gonna love anyone else?”

Sinking down further into the couch, my teenage self frowned at the TV and then at the crumbs that had just fallen on the chestal area of my t-shirt. Taking another absent-minded munch from my chocolate chip cookie, I watched as RuPaul broke out into the grapevine, her platinum blonde wig bouncing as she stepped lightly in her stilettos heels, her backup dancers following suit. She always ended her new Vh1 talk show with this directive, and it always annoyed me. It would be easier to love myself if I was in love with someone else, I wanted to argue. Isn’t that kind of the point? Love makes you feel better and cooler and prettier than you feel on your own, right? That’s why everyone wants it!Objectively, I got it. You have to love yourself before you can love someone else. But it kind of felt like choosing a bottle of apple juice over Diet Coke for lunch, or eschewing the free Snickers Bar in favor of a banana...like you were basically choosing total lamesauce. How does a relationship with yourself become as or more satisfying than a relationship with someone else? Isn’t it kind of boring? You can’t kiss your own mouth. Slow dancing with yourself is also kind of awkward. You can take yourself out on dates, but it’s not as much fun if there’s no one across from you, telling you how good you look. 
The thing was, I just didn't want to hear it. I literally could not remember a time in my life when I wasn't obsessed with boys. I was either obsessed with trying to make one my boyfriend, or I was obsessed with telling everyone how much I didn't need them (though secretly hoping that one of those beings I soooo didn't need would overhear me and decide to take up the challenge, culminating in a heated battle for my heart that he would ultimately win by surprising me at the school dance with a charming, public serenade or a choreographed slow dance on BMX bikes). And when all you've ever wanted is to have a boy fall in love with you, the last thing you want to hear is no, Amber, you're doing it wrong! No one is going to really do that until you love yourself first! 
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, okay. And I'll just stop wearing makeup and then cut my long hair into a crewcut and quit the cheerleading squad and start wearing sweatpants to school, too, because inner beauty first, right? Riiiiiiight. 
So I carried on. The RuPaulism carried with me through the rest of my teens and my twenties, even if it did result in an eye roll every time I recalled it. I had a series of relationships, all of them seemingly different when they started but ending pretty much in the same way. I knew, deep down, that there was some stuff that I wasn't dealing with, but I kept thinking - or actually, wishing - that I would just meet the right guy and then all of that stuff would magically go away or be fixed. And then I wouldn't have to do anything! I could just be in an awesome relationship and make out a lot and be super happy and not have to face any of the super lame stuff about myself anymore.

Then, as some of you long-time readers know, I became interested in the study of self-esteem in my 30's, after suddenly discovering that I didn't really have any. I've always been an super confident and fairly outgoing person, but when it came to the stuff I told myself...about...myself, well, it can be summed up by every Real Housewife of New Jersey worth her false eyelashes: "That's not nice." So I worked on that stuff. I worked on it a lot. And I got to this point in my life where I really liked where my heart was at. This also happened to be the point where I met someone and fell in love. But our relationship kind of self-destructed, and even though I came out of that wreckage better than I had expected, I was disheartened to realize that all of that work I had done before? It had to all be done again, and there was even more to do now, thanks to some of the sucktastic inner scars I had left with. So I looked at last year as time to heal. To clear out that headspace, give myself time to get over stuff, figure out what kind of life I wanted to have, just on my own.

And that's when I discovered it. This little habit I had, this underground way of thinking. Even though I had no plans to date anytime soon, I still found myself compartmentalizing and "saving" stuff for when I was in a relationship again. It is the dumbest example ever, but it mostly went like this: I wouldn't buy the nice shampoo for myself. The $28 one from my friend's Aveda salon, the kind that smelled amazing and made my scalp tingle, that made my hair as shiny and soft as a unicorn. Nope, I remember telling myself. I'll wait to buy it for when I have a boyfriend again. Then there will be someone there to actually appreciate all that shiny soft radness.

How fucking fucked up is that?

I didn't want to buy the shampoo because I wanted to save it for a boyfriend I didn't even have yet. Because I didn't consider it worth it to spend $28 for something that only I would enjoy at this particular point in time. 
Once I started noticing that type of thinking, I realized just how prevalent and insidious it was for me. And this is stuff that I have rarely, if ever, admitted to anyone else. It's not like everything I do is for the attention of a guy (just take a gander at my Twitter feed). The really strange thing is that I consider myself a pretty strong and independent woman, and actually quite enjoy being single. I don't chase after guys, and I don't lose my entire identity when I'm with one. But I also don't show my relationship with myself the same value that I would a relationship with someone else. 
And I know I'm not alone in that. I know there are a ton of other seemingly confident, strong, independent women out there who are just like me. I know because we are the reason why women's magazines have the covers they do, with the articles about career success in small print and the "Make Your Man HOT" in big bold type. We're why romantic comedies are still one of the most consistently in-demand movie genres year after year. We hate and will vocally disabuse any and all societal messages that our successful, beautiful, sophisticated and busy lives are still not complete without a man to share it with...but we still secretly believe it ourselves, in our own little way...whether it's the vacation we're waiting to take until we're finally married or the $28 shampoo we don't want to buy for ourselves unless someone else is there to appreciate it. 
And this why, when I wrote about being the one I am waiting for, I knew that a lot of that stuff was about more than just how I felt about my body. After I wrote it and then reread it, I was gutted but not surprised to realize that a lot of the messages I had carried with me about my body were also in a dark and twisty mess with the messages I carried about relationships with men. About my desire to find validation from relationships, and my willful refusal to care about my relationship with myself, first.

So this stuff, about being the one I am waiting for? It occurs to me that it can't just be about loving and accepting my body, because that's not possible unless I also really dig the person who resides inside it. And I do...but not enough yet, you know? And definitely not in all the ways that I should. I want to work on becoming the person who buys myself the sweet-smelling shampoo because I'll be the one to appreciate it, and I'm reason enough.
So that's where we're going with this. The body image stuff is definitely the focus, but we're also going to be taking the panoramic view...or as I like to call it, the Wholeistic Approach. And I'm ready to spend this next year figuring out how to get there. Like I told my friend Lacy the other day...I spent this past year learning how to get over someone else. So now I'd like to spend this next year learning how to get with myself.

That sounded kind of weird, didn't it? Like masturbation weird. Which, as you might have noticed, is also why I refuse to use the term "self-love." Remember when MTV did that whole series on sex back in the early to mid 90s? Where each episode was about "real people" talking about their experiences with STD's, hooking up, and masturbation? And then that kind of triggered this whole movement where fly girls talked about how everyone just needed to get real about "self-love", and that in an age of AIDS, masturbation was a totally cool, totally safe way to protect yourself?

Anyway, I remember that, and so I can't use the term "self-love" without thinking of this greasy-looking flannel-clad blonde girl talking about how she likes to light some candles and put on some Nirvana when she practices "self-love."

So we're not gong to use that term, is what I'm saying.

But back to the main point, which is: 
You fucking got me, RuPaul. You hear me? YOU FINALLY WIN, YOU BEAUTIFUL BLONDE BOMBSHELL!