Why It Is Imperative to Love Yourself Before You Love Someone Else

I've never understood why people say "to accept love from someone else, you must first love yourself". Before, that seems utterly silly and a little conceited. Loving yourself - in my eyes - seems to connote being vain, having really high standards, and that you didn't need to rely on anyone else because you were better than others on your own. But as I've gotten older and more mature, and have had relationships and bad friends who have tried to crush my spirit; I finally understand what it truly means to love yourself.

To love yourself means to be pleased of all your achievements and to keep aspiring and working towards great things. But it also means owning - and moving on from - all your negative experiences too. By holding on to past hurts, we are more likely to keep track of recent hurts and lump them all together. As my mum would say, "Take your test and turn it into a TESTIMONY".

Loving yourself means taking care of yourself and accepting your great features and qualities. Investing the time to feel presentable, developing your hobbies, indulging and pampering ourselves from time to time.

Equally, it means looking at your quirks and not-so-great habits, working out the ones you can change, and accepting the things that quintessentially make you the individual that you are. It means forgiving ourselves for the things we've done wrong. We cannot hope to tolerate someone else's annoying habits or quirks if we don't accept our own, and we cannot hope to forgive someone else's transgressions fully if we do not forgive ourselves for our own transgressions.

It means being comfortable on your own. Learning to love your own company and the time we devote to doing the things we love. Because we cannot hope to appreciate the serenity and preciousness of being in someone else's presence if we can't stand being on our own. Because someone sharing their down-time with you is an incredibly precious thing, because that is when they're most themselves and often most vulnerable. And the trust that that demonstrates is incredible. So become comfortable with your own company so you can better appreciate someone else's.

It means dropping the people that make you feel like less than. Those people that tell you either through their actions or words that you are not good enough. Those people that think that controlling you, hitting you, or making derogatory comments is okay. It is not okay. And you are more than good enough. Even if it means you are alone, it is better to be alone than to feel criticised and lonely in someone else's presence, right?

It means getting the help you need, instead of being proud or thinking that you can always do it on your own. Even if that means medication, therapy, rehab, academic help, financial help - it is worth it. And when you accept that you can't always and don't always have to do things alone, you'll be more open to allowing someone you love to help you.

And then, and I think only then, can you appreciate the love from anyone else.

What It Means To Be Me

Too many people have tried to shape me, I have had to dumb down aspects of myself to please others, been subjected to often insidious and almost invisible control. And I'm so done with it all. I want to be myself. For the longest while I've not been too sure who that is, or what that means, but by the time I'm done with this rant, I think I'll have found out.

I am me. I am short, mixed race, intelligent, creative, bad tempered, loving, crazy, thoughtful, broke, dedicated, bilingual, lazy, lactose intolerant, occasionally vegetarian, weird, geeky, focused, anxious and scared, hypersensitive, hypermobile, clumsy, creative, eloquent, conscientious, moody, passionate, brave, irrational, logical, travel-loving, pedantic, dense, a bit curvy, reliable, bisexual but not bi-romantic, graceful but not always lady-like, grungy yet preppy in style, and positively besotted with my family. I find it hard to trust and hard to love, but when I do I trust completely and love completely.

Now, in the past two years I've experienced a breakup with the only person I've ever loved, seen my parents split, watched my sister go through an emotionally abusive relationship, I've seen my Mum in and out of hospital for chest problems, I've been subject to derogatory comments, backstabbing and physical abuse from people that I once considered friends, I've had hospital visits and in-patient stays, I've seen my grades slip here and there, I've had to start therapy. I've been absolutely broke and had to borrow money just to be able to eat some days.

But I'll be dammed if I didn't say that I'm stronger now.

In spite of all that I've been through, I am now physically, emotionally and mentally stronger. I've learned to drop the people around me that make me feel as though I am worth nothing. I've learned to shut certain people out when necessary in order to be my best at university. I've made the decision to get help and start becoming the string young woman that I know I can be. I'm learning to stop being ashamed of my hobbies and interests, for they are what makes me interesting. I've seen my family reunite, seem my grades improve again, seen my health improve and seen my perception of myself change positively.

I no longer care about being lonely, because I have learned that it is better to be alone by yourself and confident with who you are than to feel lonely in other people's company.

And although my hear still aches to have my relationship restored and to feel loved by the person I love, I know that I cannot hope to change them and change their mind. I can only be a better person for myself, and it is a bonus if anyone else notices the changes in me.

I do not want my negative experiences to hinder me anymore. I want to be able to say I graduated from my university with a First, I want to say that I have let university and my life experiences shape me for the better. I want to remember that I am always worth loving and that I do deserve to be treated with respect, patience and kindness. I want to look in the mirror and love the person that I see in the reflection.

And I know that I can do it. Anyone that says, or makes me feel, otherwise is not a friend to me. But I am not defined by people's faith in me. I am defined by my belief in myself and my own capabilities. Anything else is a bonus.

So there. I am me. I am my quirks, qualities, flaws, and my skills. I am not anyone's puppet, anyone's doormat, nor anyone's interim/substitute until something 'better' comes along. I am impeccable and remarkable in spite of my flaws. I am Rhianna and I finally understand what it means to be me.

The Arts versus Business: Are Oil Companies The Right Sponsors For Museums?

A ‘flashmob’ protest against BP’s sponsorship of the British Museum in September 2015. Photograph: Niklas Halle'N/AFP/Getty Images (sourced from The Guardian.com)

Much like any other young adult, one of the first things I do of a morning is pick up my phone to see what I've missed overnight. Although I'll firstly check social apps that help me connect with my friends and university peers like YikYak and Facebook; I also check Flipboard and the 'trending news' section of Facebook. Usually the hot topics are celebrity based, a part of popular culture that I find it hard to engage with. But, in my perusing this morning, the topic "the British Museum" was among those trending.
Being a History undergraduate, a frequent visitor to the British Museum, and the British Museum being the topic of my dissertation; naturally it caught my interest.

Upon further reading, it transpires that the British Museum is under scrutiny from the group Art Not Oil, for its corporate ties with BP, one of the British Museum's 28 corporate sponsors and members. The campaign for the British Museum to end its allegiance with BP has been running since September 2015, and has garnered support from prominent figures and celebrities such as Mark Ruffalo, Emma Thompson, Margaret Atwood, and shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

Art Not Oil is, in their words, a "cross-section of people - artists, cultural event and gallery-goers, environmentalists, human rights activists and others - who believe that oil company logos represent a stain on our cultural institutions." Founded in 2004, their belief is that by institutions allowing these companies to provide sponsorship to them, it endorses the use of fossil fuels and is false altruism to compensate for environmental damage, such as the infamous Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010.

Their stance is one that argues that oil companies are no longer the right sponsors for the Arts, due to the public's changing and increased understanding of fossil fuels and their impact on the Earth. They argue that just as tobacco companies are no longer seen as respectable corporate sponsors, oil companies such as Shell and BP no longer should be either.

While Art Not Oil's intentions are noble, it then follows that we should call into question the other 27 corporate sponsors of the British Museum. The other corporate partners include organisations such as Genel Energy, a gas and oil company based in Jersey; Japan Tobacco International (JTI); Goldman Sachs; and Merrill Lynch.

Art Not Oil's stance with regards to BP then becomes questionable due to the their lack of visible angst towards Genel and JTI - both of whom, in their own manifesto, are deemed unsuitable sponsors for an arts institution. Similarly, banking corporations such as Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs have been fined and have come under scrutiny in the past few years for financial misconduct and the profit margins after being bailed out, respectively.

Does this mean that we, as the general public, should campaign for these corporations to end their sponsorship of the British Museum too, due to the increasing public understanding of banking corruption?

The British Museum, in Bloomsbury, London, was founded by Sir Hans Sloane with his personal collection of 71,000 items bequeathed to the public in his will in 1753, and is the world's first national public museum. It is now home to over eight million objects, has ten curatorial departments and provides Masters and short courses outsides of the events and exhibitions it holds for the public and members. As a charity registered organisation, it relies heavily on public donations and corporate sponsorship to keep its doors open for the 6 million people that visit each year.

While we do have a responsibility to maintain the planet we live on while developing in a sustainable manner, we also have a duty to preserve heritage - individual and global - for future generations. By dictating which organisations we deem 'appropriate' to sponsor and maintain our heritage, we are, effectively, choosing only to tell the best side of our story. And if we decide that every corporate sponsor of our arts institutions is unsuitable, we will be left with no arts to be able to enjoy. The British Museum does not endeavour to conceal cultures and civilisations in fear of its reputation being tarnished. So why should we expect BP to end its sponsorship of the British Museum just because they have been the perpetrators of a global atrocity too? While BP's sponsorship may be a way to assuage their guilt over the Gulf of Mexico incident, as Art Not Oil suggest, it is without doubt that their sponsorship and support is vital in keeping the British Museum open, and vital in allowing the public to even debate this issue in the first place.