You might think that after being diagnosed with cancer, the human spirit would be crushed, sad, or even hopeless. But in reality, it's free. You can't change the outcome of what happens, so you can live as freely as you can. You have a deadline you can't cross, no matter how hard you try. You can reach that deadline sooner, but that's not living the life you have left as freely as you can.
You only know what life is when you're standing at the end of it. Your life never had a meaning, but it had a direction. A direction you gave yourself. Because life keeps moving forward. It never stops. Even if you think you've stopped, even if you haven't done anything in the past few days, weeks, or even years, time still goes on.
I look at life as an equation. The moment you stop is zero. But time is linear, so every second you do nothing, it's plus zero, plus zero. Every second you do something, it's plus one, plus one. And every second you think you've done something bad, or something that makes you feel like you're going backwards in life, you're still moving forward, but in the negative direction. So it's plus or minus zero, plus or minus zero.
But when you reach the end of your life, the final number you get doesn't matter. What matters is that you've made peace with that number. And I think the important thing when it comes to accepting this number is loving yourself. Because if you don't love yourself, you'll never be satisfied with the number.
I thought about the times when I hated myself. How miserable you feel all the time. How you hate yourself, your past mistakes, and how you believe you'll never change, even if you try. But I love myself now. Because I've found out that you should love yourself.
The person you are today exists only because of your past self. So you should be grateful to your past self. Even a small change could have made you a completely different person from who you are right now. You should love your present self. It's the person you are, even as you're reading this. You're shaping your future self with every decision you make. You're making every decision based on what you think is right at that moment. You can't blame yourself for those decisions, unless you know you're making a bad one. But you can't see the future. So you should be grateful to your present self, because it's been built through the blood and tears of your past self. And it's making the way for your future self.
I think the sentence "I hate myself" isn't truthful because it directs hatred towards someone who gave you life. You wouldn't be here without yourself. If you say that you hate yourself, you're saying that you hate every happy moment you've lived through. Every sad moment you've experienced. Every satisfying victory you've achieved. So think about it. Do you really hate yourself?
The only person who could hate themselves is a monster. A monster isn't human, and it can't call itself human. It can't do human things. It can't even eat like a human. So if you hate yourself, you make yourself into a monster. But only if you truly hate yourself. And nobody truly hates themselves. Otherwise, society would be full of monsters.
I think we could say that, in today's terms, that sentence means self-criticism and self-improvement. But not real hatred. You wouldn't have a soul. You wouldn't see yourself in the mirror, but a monster wearing your skin.
When I understood that I couldn't truly hate myself, I stopped "hating" myself. Because if you can't do something completely, it doesn't feel right, does it? I wouldn't mind becoming a monster. But I liked the happy memories, even the sad ones. Because they made me who I am. And I understood that the way to move faster, become stronger, and keep moving against the gears of time is to love oneself.
Loving oneself is like unlocking your handcuffs and allowing yourself to flourish. You can do so much more in life if you just stop looking for the negatives in everything. You accept them as facts and try to find the positives. They will make your life more colourful.
You can embrace heartbreaks with more confidence. Your mind isn't consumed by bad things. And you can focus more on improving yourself. You will help other people simply through the change in your presence. So never stop loving yourself.
You can hate things about yourself, but not your whole self. You should love your entire self, even with all those bad things you dislike.
I haven't talked about this with anyone. I came to these conclusions on my own. But on the outside, I looked depressed because I didn't want people to come up to me and praise me or even ask how I had done it. So I just stopped making myself stand out. I used to be cheerful on the outside and depressed on the inside. I reversed the roles, and I think it's better for my mind.
Nothing is guaranteed in life. Even though I have nine more months to live, I could die tomorrow from a stroke. So I don't care about what I do or say. I say everything that's on my mind, and I will never hide my truth.