Why You’ll Never Find A Love You Truly Deserve If You Feel You Have To Earn It

I now see that a lot of my neurosis has been rooted in insecurity and fear. Not feeling secure and feeling that the burden of my safety, my life happenings, my success, my joy, everything – weighed solely on my shoulders with no other help or guidance. And all of it was life or death.

I either succeeded and pulled it off or there was no reason to live. I was worthless, of no value to anyone – least of all myself. When you live for others – in the eye of others, meant only to please others, it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that you mean very little unless you’re doing something that THEY like.

“Oh, you look so nice!” read: “you’re wearing an outfit or did your hair and make-up in a way that matches my idea of beauty” or “I can’t believe you would do something like that.” read: “You did something that doesn’t align with my idea of good and appropriate.”

The issue with building your identity and self-worth this way is 1. It’s very subjective to the ideas of the authority figures and influencers in your world and 2. It’s always dependent on what you DO rather than who you ARE.

Others can only judge you based on your actions. No one can go inside your mind other than yourself. You can invite others in as you begin to trust them with more of your truth, but you will always bear the burden of living inside of your mind with all of the light and dark that resides there. (and it won’t always be a burden, I promise. Sometimes it will be a bright and wild field of sunflowers).

In order to love ourselves we must remove the actions. Remove the ideas of good and wrong that have been imposed on us and just be.

It’s mind boggling how much “Be Yourself” is thrown around as casual advice when all society does is try and push forth an ideal image for all of us to aspire to. Which are we to believe? Be yourself… (as long as you’re all of these socially acceptable things, that is).

We must force ourselves to forget all of the things we do. All of the ways we earn our value. All of the ideas about us that others hold (good & bad). Forget it all. And what is left? Nothing but ourselves.

Raw. Pure. Untouched.

Still worthy. Still Deserving. Still Valuable.

Babies are born into the world – doing nothing. giving nothing and yet receiving boat loads of love. Why are we any less deserving?

We’re not.

This is my journey to discovering that love is not a prize we earn. It’s what we deserve. It’s what we’re made for. Yet, until we believe that, we won’t let ourselves have it. We’ll always be waiting until we’re perfect. Until we do enough, achieve enough, fix our bodies enough, learn enough, earn enough. It’s never enough because perfection is an illusion we’ve created in our mind. It’s a beast that never stops growing. We’ll never end the race to perfection. It has no finish line.

Maybe we’re perfect as is and the only reason we can’t tell is because of all the false ideas we’ve adopted along the way.

We’ll never believe we deserve love until we accept ourselves.

We all have different quirks to accept so, let’s get down to it. We all have things we want to change. It’s a story as old as time. But nothing can overpower our worthiness. It was gifted to us at birth and here we are oblivious to its presence. Searching for the glasses that are on our head wondering why everything is so blurry.

“The fact that I am here at all (a child of God, a constituent of this universe) is evidence that I have the right to be here.”

– Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

We all deserve love. It sounds so cheesy but when you go your whole life wondering what it takes to deserve to have it and keep it – the way you see all of your peers doing so effortlessly – it’s the greatest lesson to learn.

It’s life-changing.

I don’t have to DO anything. I already deserve it. It’s already mine.

The source of love may change in different seasons and that has no bearing on my worthiness. Stay open to the source as it changes and stay grounded in your belief of love for yourself and you will always have it.