Grow Your Own Garden Before You Water Someone Else’s

Searching for someone to love you when you haven’t done the work to love yourself first is like digging your own grave in a growing garden. Instead of planting the seeds to cultivate a life filled with pastel petals and strong long vines, you’re killing the very thing that you’re out searching for.

To be in love with yourself wholeheartedly is to have the capacity to understand that the type of love we deserve could never obliterate us in the end. So why are we out searching for something that already lives deep within our bones?

Why do we let people who can’t even comprehend the words written on our souls to sleep under our sheets?

We try to prove that we’re worthy of a text back, a drink, a date, wondering if we are cute enough or funny enough. The ache in our ribcage grows and self-doubt penetrates the deepest corners of our being. All the while, they’re probably just sleeping or just don’t care.

But that doesn’t mean you aren’t enough. They can’t make you feel small unless you let them. And fuck being small—you take up space. Your love deserves this space. I’m not going to tell you that the right one will come along and wash all of this away, because that isn’t going to happen.

You are the one. You are the only one that can heal the cracks in your chest and fill them with daisies.

And If you’re anything like me, you connect quick. You become tethered to a nice smile and deep voice. You want to know what makes that person laugh and what makes them sing. You break yourself open every day to let other people in. People who probably don’t deserve to be characters in the saga that is your life. But we have to stop admitting others who can’t handle the depth. Explore yourself all on your own. Because don’t you finally deserve that time?

Time falling in love with yourself. Fall in love when you get that promotion or when you look so hot in that new red dress. Fall in love when you’re running up an incline and you want to give up but you don’t. You deserve your love.

And I know it’s easy to love all the pretty pieces. But they aren’t everything. You have to fall in love with the unkempt parts of your soul as well. Because those feral pieces, untamed and imperfect, are a part of who you are. Without them, you aren’t the force that you were put on this planet to be. Not loving them means you are trying to be someone else, and we don’t need that—we need you.

Once you put in the work, once you explore the galaxy that has enveloped your being then the unanswered texts, the lack of interest, and the complicated will mean nothing. You’ll understand that if they can’t fall in love with you the way you have fallen in love with yourself, well then, honey, they should never have picked this flower in the first place.