Love Yourself by Kennedy Donnie

by Kennedy Donnie

A lot can happen when you’re trapped in your home for what started off as “maybe a month,” but turns into more than a year.

When the pandemic started, I had options like playing games, texting friends, drawing, playing my cello, and thinking. Sooner or later, everything bored me, and it seemed like

all that was left was to think, contemplate, and recall. I thought about my past and my future, embarrassing moments, funny moments, sad moments — just about every vague memory played in my mind like a scratched vintage movie.

I started to think of all my past mistakes, what I did wrong, and why I did the dumb things I did. Later on, I realized it was all for attention, just like what most kids do when they feel lost. I realized that I’d spent my whole life trying to impress people who I wouldn’t even have interest in looking at in the future. All that time I was a fake person just for temporary friends and I risked many permanent relationships, grades, and opportunities.

IF YOU WANT TO LOVE OTHERS, I THINK YOU SHOULD LOVE YOURSELF FIRST

I learned confidence while quarantining and not to care what people think of me. If I’m just living to make other people happy, then what the heck am I providing for myself?

The journey for me was long and exhausting but it started with listening to an album series by BTS — a boy group of seven chaotic but extremely talented young rappers who said, “If you want to love others, I think you should love yourself first.”

I realized that if I don’t take time to love and care for myself then it’s going to be almost impossible to love someone else. In other words, if I don’t have a good relationship with myself then all my other relationships will fail. My journey to self-love was hard, but I swear it was worth it. When I started to find and love myself, my life started to change for the better.

I now think of life as being like a video game. You only get one avatar and that avatar has one life. Give the avatar a great life, style it the way you want, love it the best you can, and make its decisions like there’s no tomorrow because you never know if there will be a tomorrow.