A Vulnerable Love Affair

Ever since last March, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what could have been; people I could have connected with, places I could have seen, work I could have done. I should have been in my classes and at parties and on vacations – laughing and dancing and, most of all, talking. I imagined words I would have said, and the ones I would have heard in return. But they were conversations with myself, and I hated that I was on the other end.

Life felt stagnant. Although the world around me was changing every day, I felt stuck. The same imaginary scenes of what could have been played on repeat in my head, each more uninspired, each one making me feel more and more that I was wasting the first year of my twenties. I had spent so much time relying on others to feel gratification and love that the absence of them left me without purpose. Every day was the same, and every day felt empty.

Until I met myself.

Inevitably, there will come a day when you are forced to encounter yourself. Unfortunately, it often comes at the lowest points in life – we lose the person closest to us, we are faced with loss, or we have to give up what we believed was the best part of our world. Maybe they all happen at once. In these moments, we are forced to sit in the brutal reality that we only ever have ourselves.

We are always alone.

And when we’re alone, or maybe right before we fall asleep, or when we’re in the shower, or when we’re making coffee, we think of all the happy times we once had. How joy came to us so effortlessly and how our heart aches for the people as we remember them more than their actual selves. Then we think of times we were mad; we come up with the perfect, slicing comeback, and get more infuriated now, for the sake of our younger self. And then we think of the time we curled into a ball on the floor and cried, and there was nobody there to comfort us but our own hands wrapped around our knees. Now, another tear slips out for the pain that felt so raw to us at the time.

In moments like these, when we finally become intimate with our inner self, we find that everything comes to the surface: the hurt, the pain, the shame, all of which we neglect about ourselves. When we’re alone, we can be vulnerable to our own emotions, finally realizing that turning inward is how we find our only constant source of love.

We begin to see ourselves for who we really are, rather than the self that depended on others. The parts about ourselves that we could never see the beauty in slowly become the parts of ourselves we embrace. The things we used to dwell on we now perceive in a new light and are considered trivial compared to the world of opportunity we have yet to explore. The relationship we enter with the self, we realize, is the only one we ever really need. And like any true love story, it is intricate, it is intimate, and it is beautiful as hell.

Day by day, like any relationship, we learn more. We learn how to sit in our emotions, and how sometimes to let them fill us until they pass through. We learn all emotions are temporary.

We learn we don’t need other people to make us laugh and smile. We realize we can grow into anything and anyone we want on our own.

We learn our creative tendencies were not just hobbies – they were purposes. They allow us to play, to create, to inspire, and to love. It no longer feels like we are stuck with ourselves. On our own, we now see how to create a space where we can flourish, alone. Only then do we invite others to join.

When you fall in love with yourself, the world around you becomes a different space – one only you have control over. The outside world you are in stays the exact same, but the environment you have now created for yourself, one that embraces love and celebrates purpose, is the one where your self, your true self, can freely dance.

So Happy Valentine’s Day.

May you write a love letter to yourself today.