#but this isolated life is more depleting than anything i've ever experienced

[namedforvalor]

Cause I get it, right? The whole idea of “You Can’t Love Someone Until You Love Yourself” and “You Can’t Be Happy With Someone Until You’re Happy With Yourself”- I get it. I believe it. It’s valid. The thing is that my happiness and my love for myself sprouts from the idea of being there for someone else and it always has. I’ve always been very mommy, very nurturing, very supportive, and I never needed any of that in return because that was how I got my joy. I got my happiness from seeing my friends flourish around me, I got my self love because I knew my friends could count on me, could trust me, that they understood me and that they loved me. I think it’s important to learn to be by yourself, I think it’s important to love yourself, I think it’s important to find joy in yourself, but I don’t think it’s so important that you should isolate yourself from everyone else in order to find yourself. That’s what I did earlier this year. I made a conscious decision to distance myself from my entire friend group with the idea of “focusing on myself” and “growing up” and “learning to love myself” but the thing is... I already did and I already had. Love isn’t a singular language and love isn’t a linear field. Love is so diverse and so intricate and my love might not look like your love but my God, I’ll try my hardest to recognize it and understand it and I think it’s important that people do the same for everyone. I had so many people telling me that my life revolved around everyone else, that I never took time for myself, that I never focused on myself or my goals and they got in my head and convinced me that I deserved better and deserved more from my life and so I left everything to be by myself and my God, I was miserable. I was so broken and defeated and sick on my stomach and there were a few times when I was ready to just end it all or check myself into a mental hospital I was so sick and sad, but it’s because I wasn’t listening to myself. I knew what I wanted all along, I wanted that sense of family that comes only from friendships that are deeper than a 2am on a dark back road, I wanted that sense of comfort that comes from knowing if I’m ever lonely I can pick up my phone and I won’t be lonely anymore, I wanted that sense of purpose that comes when a friend calls me, or comes to see me, or wants advice, or invites me somewhere, or just tags me in a meme because it reminded them of me. I wanted to be front row at my best friend’s wedding ceremony, behind the camera at my best friend’s baby shower, smiling in the background of snapchats and instagrams, at dinner with people who make me laugh out loud - that’s my joy. That’s my fulfillment. That’s the way I know I’m okay and that I’m good and that my life is something more than 80 years of doing nothing before they lay me in a grave. I want to be surrounded and held and I want to stay up until 4am and I want to go to dinner and I want to go to parties and I want to sit in empty gas station parking lots because that’s who I am. I never needed to learn how to be alone because fuck, I was never alone and when I was, it was heartbreaking and soul crushing. 

About two months ago, I went to the doctor to get some depression pills as a last resort. They just made me more sick and made me see knives as a way out, so I stopped taking them. I didn’t sleep for three days, I couldn’t go to work without crying in my car the whole way there and back, I didn’t eat a full meal in probably a month. And one day, driving away from the doctor’s office with tears streaming down my face, I decided I didn’t want to do it anymore and I took out my phone and I called my best friend who I haven’t spoken to in nearly a year and I just said “Hey, I know it’s been a while but I can’t do this anymore. I miss you so badly there’s an ache in my stomach and life just doesn’t feel worth it anymore.” and she said “come see me” and since then it’s been okay. It’s been a lot more smiles, a lot more hopeful mornings, a lot more appetite, and a lot more sleep. It’s not all my friends and family being back, I’m still taking some medicine for the anxiety, but it’s natural and it doesn’t make me sick. 

I guess what I’m saying is I never should have thought that I needed to learn to be alone because I don’t. Being alone is a terrible thing and it’s okay to find peace in it from time to time but I’d never want to be comfortable with it. It’s okay that my life revolves around other people, it’s okay that I get my joy from taking care of other people, it’s okay that people need me and it’s okay that I like that. At least when it’s like that I want to be alive and I can wake up every day without laying in bed for hours wondering what the point is.