Whether you know me or not, I live by inspiring quotes, so I’ll start off with this one: “You either like me or you don’t. It took me 20 something years to learn how to love myself. I don’t have time to convince somebody else.”

When I first came across these words, nothing could have felt more real than this because for me it’s true. I grew up not knowing my biological father who had cheated on my mother when she was just 16, the age that she gave birth to my twin sister and I, leaving her as a single teen mother, and since then I have seen one of the strongest women I know go through nothing but unhealthy relationships.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my step dad. He’s a great person and he’s the only man who has never left my life, but even my parent’s marriage isn’t perfect. (That’s an entirely different post though). I guess you can say I have abandonment issues when it comes to men and I’ve never had a good example of what it means to love one. I have no idea how, so when the topic of love comes up with someone I’ve been intimate with, I run away. Why? Because I don’t even love my biological father, so what makes these guys think I’m going to love them?

To me my father is a stranger, which is a good excuse for my past promiscuity with people who are no good for me. that’s probably why I have been nothing but hurt and heartbroken throughout my entire “love” life or lack there of. I guess it took me wasting a year of my life with a guy who I thought I loved to really change my life. He let his friend rape me while he watched, justifying it as a threesome that I wanted because “if i really liked him I would do it for him.” But I never said yes — I didn’t say anything, I just let it happen. And that was the moment I realized he didn’t love me either, he didn’t care about me at all, but more importantly I didn’t care about myself..

I hate using the word rape because I don’t like to admit that I’ve been through that, but I know its not my fault even though I didn’t resist. And to make it all worse, I ended up miscarrying his baby, and crying about the entire situation one drunken night, an entire year later. I wasn’t that far along, only a month or two, but I didn’t tell anybody, not even him. I was too scared..I thought I got over it, but something like that takes a lot of time to truly forgive. I’ll never forget it, but I’ve forgiven him because he’s shown me what love isn’t. And I forgive myself for allowing a man to have that much power over me because its allowed me to find my own power.

Ever since then, my relationships, or “situationships” as I like to call them, have been rocky. Nothing has worked out, which is why I joke around and say my life is a romantic comedy because my love life is a joke. I’m one of those people who constantly laughs and says I’m “forever alone” but sometimes it really does feel that way. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, because I’ve always been faithful to guys who weren’t, but through my bad decisions and mistaking sex for love, I have found my strength as a woman.

It took all those wrong guys and many disappointments to finally come to the realization that unless you love yourself first, you will never find true love. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a hopeless romantic, but I am not hopeless, and I am not desperate. There once was a time I needed a man’s — or should I say boys’ — affection and approval to validate myself, but now I know that true validity comes from within. I know it sounds cliche but it’s my truth. I came to a point just a couple months ago where I had enough. Enough of the tears, enough of the pain, enough of the sadness, the lack of sleep, the constant search for love that was inside myself the entire time.

I just graduated college and for the first time in my 21 years of life I can confidently say that I finally love myself and I am truly content with the person I am today. If you can’t love yourself completely and honestly, there’s no way you can even attempt to love another person. Maybe the love I’ve been searching for has been my own love all along, and even though it took me so long to realize all of this, finding my happiness came at my perfect moment.

I’m about to enter “the real world” stronger than ever with a new sense of empowerment that i once was giving away to other people. And its not until you find your own true love, that the love of another will come. I haven’t found him yet but I’ve found myself and for right now that’s all that matters. That’s all I need.

I’ve stopped searching for me right now because I know that he will come when the time is right. Don’t get me wrong there are times that I feel alone and would like to share my successes with a significant other, but that doesn’t mean that I’m lonely. Its OK to be alone. You need to be alone to really get to know yourself and find your self-love. And with that said, ill leave you with another one of my favorite quotes, dedicated to my future husband, “My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude.”

With Love,
Leona