You Have To Want To Be With Yourself

I’ve never actually been broken up with. I’ve always done the breaking up. There has only been once instance, after a post-breakup inquiry regarding our future state of affairs, that someone told me he didn’t love me and never wanted to be with me again. Not exactly a breakup, but a similarly sucky sentiment.

I acknowledge that my experience wasn’t nearly as bad as so many breakups are. But what I was left to do in my situation is something that took me a year to put into words. I had to sit with myself. I had to be with myself. I had to want to be with myself, because running away wasn’t an option anymore. This morning, as I sat outside the newspaper office where I work, reading, I looked up and thought to myself, I didn’t want to be with myself. And I’m not mad that he shared the sentiment. He closed the door on us and made me sit with myself. Sit, I did. Change, I did.

Rather, I reverted to what is most inherently me. I was considering/pursuing a career as an editor because I didn’t have the confidence to write. I did, however, have the love of writing. I didn’t share my work  because I didn’t want people to judge me and confirm my own notion that I wasn’t good enough. The operative phrase there is “my own notion.” The only person who was judging was me. I’ve found my best success in writing about the trials and tribulations of that relationship as well as the relationships, experiences and growth that followed, as they have been the most poignant and transformative in my young life.

Crazy beautiful shit can be disguised as miserable happenstance. Sometimes our deepest fears are realized when we just have to simply be with ourselves and by ourselves. We can, and unfortunately do, reach levels of self-loathing that makes being left detrimental because two things are confirmed. 1. That we aren’t good enough, as this super-cool-person-that-you-really-love seems to be perpetuating and 2. That when you have to sit with yourself and you realize you don’t want to you, you feel as though you are nothing without them. This may be among the most deceptive and self-destructive notions we can poison ourselves with.

Before anyone else, you need to make sure you want to be with yourself. If the doors are closing, let them, and sit with yourself. Look at yourself. When a negative thought washes over you, let it, and dig. Dig into the thoughts and feelings that you are running to the different doors to escape. The answers are there, my friends. Watch for what opens when you find them.