The best way to love me is to let go of the fake me. That’s how you’ll love yourself for real.

I always had an idea before going to sleep when I was in middle and high school. I’m the only person left on Earth, and I drive through an empty city. Now that I think about it, it’s kinda creepy. However, I used to imagine this almost every day to comfort myself after a hard day. It got worse and worse. As a teenager, if I fought with a brother two years younger, I thought, ‘I wish he would die.’ After I turned 20, whenever I bumped into my strict parents, I imagined my parents dying in a car accident. After we got married, I argued with my husband because I had a different opinion, which made me want him to die of lung cancer. (My husband smoked a lot.) Your best bet is to imagine what it would be like if your second son, who didn’t live up to your expectations, passed away. My son’s death seems terrifying and extremely sad, but I feel like I will be freed from the burden of taking care of him and raising him, so for some reason my life will be better when he dies.

Every time I recognized my terrible imagination like this, I felt embarrassed. I tried different things to stop it. Every Sunday, I went to church and prayed to God for the forgiveness of my sins. I’ve read books by Freud and Jung. I’ve watched and read talks by famous speakers. I tried to comfort myself and to understand. But I failed every time. So I expected my life to be meaningless.

Then, by chance, I started meditating and I could understand why my mind was like that, and I’m slowly getting out of it. I realized there is no life in my heart, only death. Driving on an endless road in a world where everyone has disappeared shows how selfish and closed I am. In meditation, I realized I had no room for improvement going forward. My heart wasn’t even 1% warm. That was hard for me to admit. However, when I realized that I was a garbage human being, the possibility opened up. Meditation helped me let go of myself full of falseness. There’s a self-esteem craze going on in Korea. Everyone is talking about it. I decided to discard myself. The false self. The teacher who guided me through meditation explained this to me. The best way to love me is to let go of the fake me. That’s how you’ll love yourself for real.

Donna, a mom of two sons