How I Fell in Love With Myself and Became the One For Me
I’ve always been the one playing love doctor to everyone except for myself. Why not? I’m so good at it! Exes that ended up with my friends. Right after my first real boyfriend broke up with me in eighth grade, he got together with his high school sweetheart and they’ve been married ever since! Score! My high school sweetheart cheated on me and left me for a pretty blonde. They are still together too! Seems to be the never-ending reoccurring theme of my life. Isn’t it all too ironic?
Too ginger, too pale, too many freckles, too many curves. Lose weight!
Too smart, too weird, too loud, too crazy, too intense, too sexual.
Too much, too little, whatever, I give up.
Sometimes it still stings a little bit. When I get rejected again and again. You start to think something is essentially wrong with you. But you know, I was used to it. God was protecting me from those who are just not that into me. If someone could finally really be into me, that’d be great…. but I’m sure he’s somewhere in the matrix of unanswered DM’s. It’s not him, it’s me. I’m the one.
Fostering men until they find their forever home has become my job. So I quit. And I don’t regret it for a second. I’m worth more than that, and maybe one day someone special will see. Until then, I am the one.
If they never do, I am cool with that too. You know, I love myself enough for two. Because God kept throwing the same test at me until I had to choose myself and my sanity over some buster dude.
After a highly toxic and abusive 5 year relationship, I jumped right into another that destroyed me. I call him “the last nail in the coffin.” He cheated, he lied, he was not the guy he said he was at all! How could I be fooled again? I was only fooling myself with these type of men.
My health took a huge toll after five and a half years of being in endless fight or flight, my body gave out on me. I began to have hives daily. I started to have chronic pain, and eventually found out I had Fibromyalgia.
My doctors said it was from trauma - I need therapy… there is no cure. All of this for a man that took another woman to the alter! After I made him a man, after all that pain, I could not change him. I wasn’t the one.
Yeah to him, and him, and him, but to me, I am most definitely the one.
I really enjoy my own company. I am witty, funny, creative.
I can make just about anything fun! I am genuine. My love is real. Even if no one I ever loved actually loved me back — I loved them, truly and fully. I always will. That is a beautiful thing, what an amazing gift! I am able to love, some don’t even have that in them. They don’t have the capacity to love anyone outside of themselves. I am quite the opposite! I loved others more than myself for far too long.
Honestly I don’t regret the choices I’ve made in terms of love, although I’m sure many were based on insecurity and codependency. God forced me to step back and really evaluate that. He forced me to let go.
What made me feel like I was not good enough? What made me stay even though I knew the pending doom?
What made me not follow my intuition? What made me ignore every red flag and allow myself to be blinded by love?The only option there was, was to go abstinent, stop dating and explore my love for self. Most people have trouble being alone, I find it relieving.
I am soothed by the thought no one can disappoint me. I like eating alone, I like shopping alone, I like thinking alone, watching TV alone, going to events alone.
I am okay with allowing God to give and take what and who He pleases from my life. The only thing that makes me sad is when I genuinely like someone and they don’t like me because I just want to give them my love! It’s not insecurity, it’s not neediness, it’s not the dying need of approval from the opposite sex. It’s none of that.
It is truly that I want to love them. I know my love is pure and real. I know any rejection is their loss. I know for facts nine times out of ten they will regret it. Because almost all of my exes checked back after I got back to loving myself, and being okay alone. They always come back… when your love was genuine.
The point of my not-so love story is — you can be okay alone. You don’t need to be desperate or anywhere close to it. Make a list of the good qualities you have and focus on them. No you aren’t perfect, but who the hell is? Everyone on this planet deserves love.
You are worth it. Wait for it. And until then, be the one.
