Boyfriend Named Journalism

I’m crying again and listening to slow jams as I soak my forearm with pathetic tears.

I’ve shut off all the lights in the room and I’m letting the music drown out my thoughts. He did it again. My parents warned me about this, yet here I am.

I met him in high school of my junior year. When unrequited love left me feeling inadequate and erupting with emotion. When girls made fun of my hair and called me every name from “Buckwheat” to “Don King.” Writing was my outlet, it was an escape. He was my superman disguised in glasses and a suit and tie with everything needed to save me underneath.

Since I started college, he’s taken me to concerts and events. He’s introduced me to a ton of new and interesting people, even some celebrities. He’s taken me across the globe to London and France, challenging me to expand my cultural palate. He made me feel like I could save the world with just a flick of my pen, and he’s rescued me at my lowest. When my grandma passed, he gave me the strength and courage to write her memorial. He walked with me, holding my hand, carrying the weight of each stride up to the podium, telling me it was okay to cry, that it didn’t make me weak but strong because it was the truth. It was honest.

Journalism was always there, he may not be perfect, but he was there.

When a guy I really liked left me at a show surrounded by swaying googly-eyed couples, all I had was my camera and my notepad. I began to take pictures of those couples; I wrote; I sang-along; I smiled; I laughed… I had fun.

He taught me to invest in myself. Through him I saw not only the world, but it allowed the world to finally see me.

When I told my parents about him, they were far from thrilled. He wasn’t stable. He wasn’t safe. They were afraid he couldn’t provide for me financially, but my love grew deep with every word and syllable.

When they saw how he made me feel and my entire self-esteem change, they slowly accepted him. He empowered me and gave my voice a stage. He never interrupted me and appreciated my every thought and rant.

So why am I here crying? Because my name wasn’t put on one of my best articles; I received a phone call from a frustrated interviewee who felt they were depicted incorrectly; most of the time I feel unappreciated; I’ve had a story stolen from me; I’m broke; and, worst of all I feel like Journalism and I are out of touch. I’m fed up. Every time, this happens I promise myself I’m done.

I’m tired of Journalism breaking my heart and not being everything it promised it would be, and sometimes I wonder if I’m too focused on him. I fret that I’ll be that woman that’s been so focused on her career that she has no one. I’ve watched my friends around me get in committed relationships and I wonder if I’m missing something.

A friend of mine went through a rough break-up, and in tears she exposed to me that she felt she didn’t know who she was. That what made her really love her boyfriend was that he was passionate about something. She thought that if he could love something, an inanimate object, so much he would be able to love a person ten-fold. All the while, never finding out her own passion, her own voice. She never had the time to fall in love with herself. She never pursued her passions long enough to let them lead her, to her. When you know yourself, you know your self-worth. She found herself putting up with a lot of his nonsense, never knowing to demand anymore.

Someone once told me that self-love was the most important kind of love, because it could get you through anything and it’s been said many times that you can never love someone until you learn to love yourself, but they never tell you how to do that. What path do you take?

I say, listen to your heart. What makes it beat a little faster? What scares you and thrills you at the same time? What gives you those butterflies inside? That is your love; your passion is an extension of yourself. It’s the cuff on your sleeve in which you display your heart. Once you have that no one you ever meet will think they’re irreplaceable. You would have already found the love of your life.

So my dear Journalism, I don’t want to see them come down my eyes, so I go to let this blog cry. All I need in this life of sin, is me and my notepad. Thank you for showing me who I am and what I have to offer the world. For now, no one else holds a candle near your fire. I spent so much time searching for validation through others, but through you, I learned to validate myself, and I’m finding that I was always good enough for you, because I was always good enough for me.

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post.