Go Love Yourself: Self-Worth Comes From Within

I doubt I’m the only person in the world who has measured their self-worth by the quantity and quality of romantic relationships they’ve had. We’re constantly told that in this life we have to have a successful career, see the world, an active social life while doing it all with the love of our life. I’ve been a big fan of romantic relationships since I was a kid. Hell my mom had to tell me at 5 that I would meet the best husband at college. It’s this affixation on being married or in a stable relationship that has caused me at 25 to feel inadequate amongst my fellow mid-twenties friends.

It’s the feelings of worthlessness that has led me to make some pretty horrible decisions. But once Jack Daniels or Captain Morgan’s hits my lips there’s no point in pretending that my value isn’t based on who I attract that night.

There are so many beautiful messages out there that tell us we don’t need to fall in love with another person, we should just love ourselves. That’s a great idea but when everyone around you is partnering up and meeting their Ted Mosebys, I find myself realizing just how lonely it is to face this world alone.

Recently this has led to texting my ex. The one person in the world I swore to myself and my best friend I would never talk to again. After a night out of being an out of control idiot, I woke up with more than just a bad hangover. I woke up to a text conversation I had initiated with Voldemort, a nickname cleverly handed to me from one of my closest friends.

We go back to the people we feel comfortable with because at one point we had showed them our nitty gritty centers. Telling someone your fears and having them still want to be around is the ultimate goal. This was my ultimate goal until Voldemort shattered that. He saw all of my pieces and said no thank you. I couldn’t be mad because it was a lot of shit to deal with (think the movie Trainwreck).

The truth is that when I loved him I wasn’t ready for him. I wanted so badly to be the person he loved but how did I expect him to love someone who didn’t even love their self? We wander through this world trying to find out who we are and that’s really fucking hard in itself. Why are we always acting like the seller in a buyer’s market?

So what do we do to make sure that we realize our worth? Well that’s not so easy. I can tell you that I’ve mastered this but that’d by lying. We have to find out who we are by figuring out what we like to do. If you take a good hard look at yourself; would you date you? We have a habit of thinking we’re ready to be in love without realizing that we really have no fucking clue who we are.

Knowing yourself allows you to freely be the person you are in any situation. Falling in love with the person that you are will give you a chance to know you deserve to be treated like a king or queen and not as a person who’s only good for Netflix and chill.

Like I said before I haven’t come close to mastering this yet. Like all relationships, it takes time to get to know who you really are and what you really want. If you take small steps every day towards this, there’s no telling who might fall in love with you. Hell if you’re lucky, it’ll be you.