This Is How A Woman Chooses Herself Over Love

It was always a tug-of-war. Somehow, there were always two women: The one who loved to love and the one who longed for otherness, for a simple sort of searching.

You were once the woman who loved to love. And you were exciting. Dazzling. You could take the room by a storm; the click of your heels was enough to silence any conversation. You revelled in the rituals of attraction; your wit was razor sharp, and your charm was effortless. You were magnetic and you knew it.

But suddenly, you became largely uninterested in love as you’d known it before. You had experienced the antics of it all—the frenetic texting and consulting with friends, the rigamarole of sculpting your face and body to maximize your powers of seduction, the eventual thrill of feeling desired, and the true sense of accomplishment and power that came along with it.

Chasing love was a season of life rife with insecurity and the need for validation. But now, you are confronted with this very deep and very solid internal validation, that in one fell swoop annihilated your desire to be pursued or cherished or adored. You adore and cherish yourself, and you are captivated by the thrill of pursuing your dreams which are infinitely more fulfilling for you.

Even the prospect of a lost love returning doesn’t excite you like it once would have. You smile at the years of feeling nothing but vacillations of despair or possibility when their name appeared on your phone; you chuckle at the vicissitudes of wanting them to want you, and you feel compassion for the shame of how you would reduce yourself to nothing or anything for them. 

A new vision has overtaken you, one that does not include romance. And now you are you, always you, and you have no desire to be anyone but who you are.

And when you ask yourself, Am I just tired and old, unwilling to engage in the hoopla of it all? You realize that no, you are truly just over it; you really just transcended the turbidity of it all. You are untethered to who you used to be.

You chose yourself. You chose growth.