It Took Being Alone To Finally Find Myself

For a long time, my biggest fear was that I would end up alone. I felt being alone was something I never wanted for myself and just the thought made me anxious. It wasn’t until I was put in a situation where I was forced to be alone that I started to truly find myself. After two long-term relationships from when I was 17 until I was 26, I started my journey of healing, self-love, and finding myself for the first time.

I never knew what it was like to be single and really understand it. To me, being single seemed like the scariest thing in the world. Somehow, I felt if I was single it meant that there was something wrong with me and I needed to be fixed. So, for eight years of my life, I committed myself to two different people.

Looking back now, I see how each of them served a different purpose in my life and in my story. One showed me what love is not and I learned the difference between love and infatuation. The other taught me what true love is but also real heartbreak. Losing someone I never wanted to lose was a humbling experience. I learned sometimes love isn’t enough to fix everything, and in order for me to grow, I had to dig deeper within myself to fix me.

I realized I was so focused on not being alone that I jumped into relationships blindly. I suppressed my insecurities and lack of self-love that I struggled with and hoped a relationship would fill that void I felt, but it never did. Eventually, everything came to the surface and played a part in this person I would become when I was in a relationship.

After my last relationship, it took me a while to really bounce back. It brought me to a really dark place that I wasn’t sure I could get out of. It’s something I still struggle with, but I learned not to let it consume me. I told myself I will take this time to learn about myself and who I was. I needed to find my own happiness outside of someone else.

Through this process, I have grown so much. I faced every insecurity and started to learn things about myself that I never knew. It has changed me in many ways, and I started to love the person I was becoming. I’ve become resilient, confident, accountable, and self-aware, and the list goes on.

The most important lesson I learned was no matter how much I thought I was ready for love, I wasn’t. No matter how much I felt it and experienced true love, I could never truly know love if I never learned to love myself first.

It’s been two years that I’ve been on this solo journey of finding myself. Although it’s a struggle at times, I continue to love myself more each day and grow. I believe when the universe knows I am ready, that’s when the magic will happen. All the right things will be put on my path.