SELF LOVE

So a few posts back I stated that I didn’t believe in falling in love. At the end of that same post, I vowed to delve into this belief of mine to see if it really was true. And since then, over the last few weeks, I’ve been knuckling down to some work…. on loving myself.

Well, if I don’t love myself (as some of my earlier blog posts demonstrated – I was not my biggest fan) then what love do I have to give to others?

If I am constantly at war with myself, how the hell did I think I was going to live peacefully with another?

Now it’s a work in progress but we are making some headway… I think I’m starting to fall a little in love with myself.

What makes me think this? Well according to my research, I’ve got all the symptoms.

Everything seems brighter and lighter and it’s like the quality of my life has been upgraded to high definition. Every day is just full of fun, even the mundane things – it’s like I’m constantly at play. Comments over heard or songs that come on the radio are like divinely timed messages and nothing appears as if by accident.

When I “threw out all those boxes” as mentioned in my previous post, I also dropped my own fixed expectations and in doing so I have allowed a little love to flourish within myself – just as it would with another person if I didn’t require them to meet a ridiculous checklist of criteria.

I feel as though slowly but surely I am waking up to the error of my ways and it’s supporting the idea that mine is the only reality – In that it really doesn’t matter what is going on around me or what I think people think I should or shouldn’t be doing because my thoughts are my thoughts and are the only ones that are capable of keeping me in the light or the dark, not other people’s.

In your thirties, dating steps up a notch, particularly for the ladies with their biological clocks ticking and family members not letting you forget it either.

It is also at this time I think we believe that we know ourselves more and are so much clearer about what we need and the truth of who we are – we’ve had thirty odd years of experience after all.

But do we really know ourselves?

Has our 30 plus years of life learning experiences really taught us what we do and don’t want?

Or could this actually be the turning point where the magic happens?

Where we say to ourselves “Holy crap, I’m not entirely sure I want any of this stuff I’ve been hell-bent on getting for the last god knows how many years!”

I feel right now that I’ve been chasing after things for so long that I’ve completely forgotten why I am chasing after them.

When questioning myself on them right now I actually can’t come up with a logical reason to be dedicating my life journey to some of them and compromising my happiness in the process of attaining them.

Just like my dates, I was going through life much the same way. I started each day with an extremely detailed plan and a checklist of “what I need to be happy” laid out and all that really did was disappoint me.

So it turns out my own boxes were actually boxing me in.

I have realised that my days couldn’t just unfold and be enjoyed and experienced as I began each one with far too many expectations.

I reckon I had a bloody good idea of what I wanted when I was about 10 years old but for the 20 years that followed I was conditioned to want other things, things that actually other people wanted for me, or things that society told me I should be wanting.

Essentially I got lost chasing after stuff I certainly don’t need and don’t really want either.

I’m starting to realise that things such as careers, money, partners, having a family of my own don’t actually matter.

There is only one thing that does and that is how I FEEL.

Because even if I’m rolling around in my own cash in my beautiful 5 bedroom home in the suburbs with my perfect husband and our 3 children, if I’m miserable then the whole lot is totally pointless.

So in light of the above, dating has become a hell of a lot simpler.

I am only looking out for one thing now and that is the way someone makes me feel as opposed to their attributes.

It’s funny how love – in my case an unfamiliar dose of self-love – can come in and illuminate what is actually real for us and what really matters.

This little bit of self-love has shifted me from where I was before and in fact where I have been for quite a while.

I’m not sure where I am being shifted to and I have no idea what the outcome will be.

To be perfectly honest, I’m feeling a little naked with my cast iron belief system having just had a mighty shake-up but I’m learning to own it… wobbly bits and all!

And I am starting to believe that all else aside, self-love could, in fact, triumph all.