Learning how to "unfuck myself" on Valentine's Day
A picture of me being single as fuck
Right after the new year, my coworker bought me a mini calendar with three hundred and sixty-five daily inspirational quotes each meant to help me “unfuck [my]self". I came into work this morning and I hesitated to rip off the quote for February 14th. I didn't want to be reminded of today or anything related to love. It's 4:20 PM (shut up, I know what you're thinking), nearing the end of my workday and I've just now decided to cut my heart open with today's words of wisdom. Today's inspiration reads: "the ultimate expression of love is loving another in the way they want to be loved." I read this and my first thought was what a disgusting way to tell me that I need to love someone else but then I realized, what if this quote is also trying to tell me to love myself the way I would want someone else to love me?
We go through life depending on things outside of ourselves to fill our cup, to show us, love. I would know, I relied on my partner to fill my cup for four years. I expected so much out of him that I began resenting him. And you know what I've realized? Breaking up with him was one of the greatest decisions I've ever made. I love him to death, I will always truly love him and to the point where it makes my stomach turn remembering were not together but I didn't love myself when we first started dating and I couldn't learn to love myself through dating him either.
I also experienced this dependency with my Mom. And when you're dependent on your Mom and your boyfriend and you lose them both, well, you're fucked. You get thrown on the side of the road with cars flying by you, splashing puddles onto your cold, abandoned skin. You fall, my GOD do you fall. You wish you could feel the comfort of your boyfriend's arms, you long for your Mom's loving advice - basically, you just want to die. But then after a while, once you start to walk again, you realize that you don't truly need either - you no longer require either. All along, you just needed to be there for yourself the same way those people were there for you. And that voice inside of you that you've been ignoring all of this time has been giving you the answers you've needed - not your real estate agent and definitely not your boss (who's told you multiple times that he's not your therapist) - but YOURSELF, YOU.
I've had twenty-four years on this Earth. Twenty four years of experiences, of heartbreak, of loss, of incredible, incredible pain and I've learned so much through it all. After all the heartbreak comes the breakthrough. Co-dependency turns into self-dependency. Self-dependency turns into listening to yourself and loving every single god-damn part of yourself without anyone's reassurance, without anyone else’s comfort. Today is Valentine's day and it is the first Valentine's day both without my Mom and ex-boyfriend - my two truest forms of unconditional love. And somehow, this has been the most amazing, rewarding day for me in a very, very long time. Today, I am choosing to celebrate loving myself because "the ultimate expression of love is loving [myself] in the way [I] want to be loved" and no one else can do that for me but me.
