I am okay being single– I think. LOL.
The thing is though, I love the idea of being in love. Going on dates and being romanced and being someone’s favorite person. It sounds rewarding, safe, and exciting. Who wouldn’t want that?
I’ve been single for a little over a year and half now, and boy, has it been dry. This is partly due to COVID-19, but mostly due to my own hesitation about dating.
It’s scary putting yourself out there, it’s scary to become vulnerable with someone you barely know and expect things to turn out okay. I’ve found that it’s also really difficult to engage with anyone. At no point in my dating app experiences did I feel truly excited about the people I was talking to, but I was lonely and I just wanted to go out.
So, I did go out with someone with the hope they’d eventually fill the hole in my soul. And… it was awful. LMAO.
Never mind the fact that the date was actually awful. I, as an individual, felt awful. I was trying to fix a part of myself that I thought had healed a long time ago. I came to the distressing revelation that I was not okay, and hadn’t been okay in a really long time.
For so long, I was okay. I was really good and I was happy and felt good. Unfortunately, that’s faded. Now, I feel inadequate and undesirable and terrified because my worth has suddenly become dependent on other people, which it has never been before.
Coming to this revelation forced me to reflect on everything I had done from my last break up to that point. Why was I feeling so bad when I was doing so well? Had I done something wrong? Had I poisoned my life so deeply that suddenly it was reflecting back onto me?
One thing I know for absolutely sure is that growth is not linear. Just because I am not okay right now does not mean that I will stay this way forever. I am going to grow and learn and start to love myself again. I want you all to know that. Loving yourself is hard, it might just be one of the hardest things you ever try to do in your life, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.
If you’re in the same place as me, that’s okay. It’s okay to not be okay. We will get through this! We just have to focus our energy on making space for ourselves, finding parts of ourselves that only we know about, and fall in love with them.
You will be okay, one day.
Perhaps one day I’ll be grateful for this moment. I’ll be grateful for the insecurities that built me back to my independent self. For now, though, I’m vulnerable and scared and I just want to be someone’s person. Their favorite person. I am my own favorite person, but somehow that doesn’t feel like enough.
So, I can clearly look at myself in the mirror and definitively say that while I deeply desire being in a relationship, I don’t think I’m ready for it. I haven’t found the space in myself to feel good alone, and how can I love someone else when I hardly love myself?
Please don’t try to fill the hole in your soul with temporary satisfaction, it’s just not worth it in the end.
Love will return to me, and it will return to you, when the Universe believes we are ready. Until then, we have to work on our most important relationship, the one with ourselves.