I had my heart broken by my first love after a short romance of some six months. I can't say that I blame him entirely because I was one needy bitch with an unrealistic definition of what love was supposed to be. Having an unrealistic idea or definition of what love is supposed to be has always been my problem - as I assume it is for a lot of people.
After I got my heart "broken" in 1996, I spent the next decade searching for "love". And when i say 'searching" I mean "DESPERATELY" searching. I was desperate because society had led me to believe that in order for me to be complete, to be validated, that I needed to have a boyfriend. Who are you in the world if you don't have a boyfriend? Because having someone in your life translated to "being wanted and desired". Right?
For an entire decade, I fell "in love" with so many men that either: 1) were not interested, or 2) just wanted access to the goodies and then goodbye. In the past six months since I separated, I've looked thru my journals and found page after page of heart-ache and disillusion. It was a bit hard to swallow. Now, I've grown a lot in the past fifteen years, and i was able to admit to myself that there was only one person to be blamed for all that ache i experienced and it was me.
It's really sad to admit it, but in all honestly, I was searching for someone to complete me and make me feel whole. (When I think of it, the other me-half that was meant to complete me was out busy drinking and fooling around; one fourth was busy with school and the other fourth was obsessing over love. LOL)
A decade went by searching for something unnecessary, and that doesn't exist. Then I met Michael when i was least expecting it, and our friendship turned to dating and that turned to a relationship which in turn turned to a marriage and then... five years later a divorce.
So, 15 years had gone by and I was now a totally different person. I was on BART on my way into the city from Concord for work. I saw a gorgeous man standing by the exit door. I thought to myself "Oh. He's so hot. He looks well established. I have nothing to offer to him!".
I HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER TO HIM.
'I have nothing to offer him" was underlined and highlighted and bolded by my emotional editor. It hit me right then and there, that I had almost slipped back into that mindset of that hideous decade wasted not celebrating who I was and loving myself. I stopped myself right there and then and asked myself: "What are you saying? You have nothing to offer to him?".
And so why do we have to have something to offer to anyone? When did a list of "must-meets" and criteria become part of the love game? Or part of relationships, period? It might be true, you know?, that I do not have what he is looking for or is expecting out of his "ideal partner", but you know... it was at this moment that i realized that I am an amazing, wonderful person, and that everything and anything amazing that I had to offer... it was for no one, but to myself. Anything and everything that I have to offer; good or bad, I can only offer to myself.
I deserve ME, damn it. Nothing more and nothing less. My beauty, my gifts, my flaws, my weaknesses and my strengths were for no one. Only for me. Even if I was to enter another relationship, I would enter it aware that everything that I am, I am for me and only me. And that this person who would be entering a relationship would love me and appreciate me for the mess that I am.
Or else, how can it be love or romance when we find ourselves going thru changes to become someone else for that other person?
And so here I am. I am now an old queen; yes old... but not bitter. Just wiser. And as I inch my way to my 40's, there is no better place to be than in making peace with all those demons that reeked havoc in my head and heart during that decade known as my 20's.
Amen.
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