I am told by society
that I will never love someone
If I can never love myself

Since the day I could understand what loving another was
I have been told that phrase
So much so
That it has been engraved in my dreams

Haunting the love that I give
Haunting the love that I receive

Will I ever truly be loved

The weight of those words will never
Go away fully
I can ignore them
I can forget they exist
But they will never go away

Just like the thought that truely loving someone comes after loving yourself

As a small child
I had wondered
If I was going to be able to love someone
For I could not love myself no matter how hard I tried

The love I was giving was
an empty shell of what it should be
The love I was receiving
So close yet so far

But the poets
They tell me
That I could never love my self as I do another person
No matter how narcissistic a person may be
There would always be one person they loved above themselves

They told me that loving myself was never necessary to loving others
They talked about how
If you truly loved someone you'd never truly love yourself

You give a piece of yourself to them when you truly love them
You can never get that piece back and you can never love that piece with the intent of self love after

They say that loving will be learned with time
But I can never be one to say that is true

The time I spent trying to love others and love myself is time I will never get back
Society says that love is something special
It is a gift to have

I call love poison
A drug so addictive that there will never be a cure
So now I ask
Is love it's self even worth it?