Inspiration: It’s All of the Colors

Flipping through all of these magazines
Telling me who I'm supposed to be
Way too good at camouflage
Can't see what I am
I just see what I'm not
I'm guilty 'bout everything that I eat
(Every single bit)
Feeling myself is a felony
Jedi level sabotage
Voices in my head make up my entourage

'Cause I'm a black belt when I'm beating up on myself
But I'm an expert at giving love to somebody else
I, me, myself and
I, don't see eye to
Eye, me, myself and
I

Oh, why do I compare myself to everyone?
And I always got my finger on the self destruct
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Why am I always looking for a ride or die?
'Cause mine's the only heart I'm gonna have for life
After all the times I went and fucked it up
(All the times I went and fucked it up)
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
I wonder when I love me is enough
I wonder when I love me is enough

Haters that live on the internet
Live in my head, should be paying rent
I'm way too good at listening
All these comments fucking up my energy

'Cause I'm a black belt when I'm beating up on myself
But I'm an expert at giving love to somebody else
I, me, myself and
I, don't see eye to
Eye, me, myself and
I

Oh, why do I compare myself to everyone?
And I always got my finger on the self destruct
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Why am I always looking for a ride or die?
'Cause mine's the only heart I'm gonna have for life
After all the times I went and fucked it up
(All the times I went and fucked it up)
I wonder when I love me is enough (is enough)

Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
I wonder when I love me is enough
I wonder when I love me is enough

I'm my own worst critic
Talk a whole lot of shit
But I'm a ten out of ten
Even when I forget
I-I-I-I
(I'm a ten out of ten, don't you ever forget it)

I'm my own worst critic
Talk a whole lot of shit
But I'm a ten out of ten
Even when I forget
I-I-I-I

Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
I wonder when I love me is enough
I wonder when I love me is enough

Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
I wonder when I love me is enough
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Alex Vincent Niceforo / Anne Marie Nicholson / Demitria Lovato / Jennifer Decilvio / Keith Roger Sorrells / Sean Douglas / Warren Felder

I Love Me lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Reservoir Media Management Inc

There is a quiet cruelty in the way the world teaches us to look at ourselves. Not directly, not honestly, but through mirrors owned by other people. Magazines, screens, voices, histories, lovers, strangers. They line us up beside impossible outlines and ask us to notice what is missing. In these lyrics, I hear that ritual of subtraction. Not who I am, but who I fail to be. Not what fits, but what falls short.

“I’m a black belt when I’m beating up on myself.” That line lands like a confession I recognize in my bones. I have spent years perfecting the art of internal demolition. I can catalog my flaws faster than my gifts. I can remember every mistake with museum quality lighting, while my strengths sit in the dark, unnamed. There is a strange competence in self-harm that looks like discipline. We call it responsibility. We call it insight. But often it is just fear wearing productivity’s coat.

The song speaks to the way love travels outward more easily than inward. I know how to show up for others. I know how to listen, protect, encourage, hold space, make meaning for someone else’s wounds. But when it comes to myself, my hands hesitate. My voice tightens. I treat my own heart like a suspect instead of a companion. I interrogate it instead of feeding it.

“I always got my finger on the self destruct.” That is not drama. That is survival learned too well. When you grow up bracing for impact, you start sabotaging before the world gets the chance. You compare, you shrink, you apologize for existing. You look for someone else to be your ride or die because trusting yourself feels dangerous. But the lyric reminds us of a quiet truth: mine is the only heart I will carry for life. Everyone else passes through. I remain.

There is something almost holy in the question, when is loving me enough? Not perfecting me. Not fixing me. Not performing me. Loving. The kind of love that does not demand evidence. The kind that sits beside you while you forget who you are and waits until you remember.

The internet voices in the song feel familiar too. Haters living rent free in the head. Old judgments replaying like archived weather. Trauma does that. So does art. So does visibility. You start listening too well. Every comment becomes scripture. Every glance becomes law. Energy leaks. The body absorbs what it was never meant to host.

But then the song turns. Softly, stubbornly.

“I’m a ten out of ten, even when I forget.”

That is not arrogance. That is repair. That is the work of standing in front of your own life and choosing not to prosecute it anymore. It is saying: I am allowed to take up space even on my bad days. I am allowed to be unfinished without being unworthy.

To love yourself is not a performance. It is a daily, quiet agreement not to abandon your own side. It is noticing when you speak to yourself the way you would never speak to a friend. It is lowering the blade. It is feeding the part of you that keeps surviving even while being doubted.

This song does not say, I love me perfectly.
It says, I wonder when I love me is enough.

Enough to stop running.
Enough to stop apologizing for breathing.
Enough to stop outsourcing belonging.

And maybe the answer is not a finish line. Maybe it is a practice. A hand placed back on your own chest each morning. A small oath: today I will not treat myself like the enemy.

Because the bravest relationship we ever enter is the one we have with the person who cannot leave us.

Ourselves.