The journey to self-love and respect looks different for everyone; it comes more easily for some than others. Personally, loving myself took time. Iād say it took me from my sophomore year of high school to the end of senior year to truly embrace myself, and recognize that I do not need anyone else to validate anything about me to be happy. Two years to build the self-confidence I needed to feel good in my own skin. But what took two years to build took mere months to destroy.
About a year ago, I found myself in a rushed relationship, founded on lust more than anything. It was good at first: I felt seen, he made me feel beautiful, and even saw beauty in things Iād never really appreciated about myself before. I felt like this could be The Relationship Iād always dreamt about. But things werenāt as great as they appeared. It turned out that I didnāt know him as well as Iād thought. There were red flags Iād chosen to ignore, and those red flags came back to bite me in the end. To put it simply, he had not been 100% honest with me. It became clear that he was never serious about the relationship, and I was not the only person he was involved with ā though heād told me otherwise.
Iād never felt more unhappy with myself. Negative self-talk that Iād grown out of snuck back into my life, and I shamed myself for not being smarter. I asked myself how I could be so stupid, wondered why I wasnāt good enough for him, et cetera, et cetera. I spent the whole summer and greater part of fall semester beating myself up for letting myself get hurt.
Itās taken me until now to make the decision to take back control of my own feelings. Iāve let this 19-year-old boy influence how I feel about myself for far too long. He may not have respected me enough to be honest with me, but I need to respect myself enough to allow myself to move past it. I got hurt, my confidence was shaken, I felt like I wasnāt worthy of real love or anything more than what he gave me. But that simply is not true. Iām beginning to love myself again; Iām doing my daily affirmations, because the only person whose validation is ever relevant in life is you. Lifeās far too short to spend very long worrying about why anyone didnāt treat you right, whether thatās a significant other, an ex-friend, or even a family member. Worry about treating yourself right; I know thatās my goal for this year. Iām going to get to a place where one personās actions do not have the power to undo all of the work Iāve put into myself, and I hope anyone else going through a similar chapter in their life can do the same ļ.