Loving Yourself

How can one devote a heart full of wisdom, anger, happy memories and sad tears to someone else without fully knowing him or herself first? Well, my friends, the truth is, those that seek love without thoroughly knowing themselves first are possibly looking for someone to help them learn more about themselves along the long road of a relationship.

Now, I can't really speak so much for men, because I haven't really had any experiences of love from a man's point of view (which, I think I should be thankful for?), but I can speak from a woman's point of view, from my point of view. When I began dating my ex (we just had a break up after dating for about three years), I was so young and clueless as to who I was and what I really wanted with my life. I was 17 years old and to be honest with you, I don't know the exact reason why I said, "Yes!" when he asked me out. I could tell you the normal things like, "Oh, well he was cute and nice." However, I most certainly could not tell you what I wanted out of this relationship that I was going to build with him.

It took some time for me to really trust this guy and feel comfortable enough to offer my heart to him. As I said, I wasn't sure who I was, so I couldn't just offer my whole heart right there on the spot. No, not so quickly. Through time, maturity, getting to know each other a little better, blah blah blah, I was finally able to say, "I love you." And then I knew... that I was in love. Really though, there is no definite, clear definition of love. Nonetheless, the fact that I could finally admit that I was in love through the process of getting to know him and getting to know myself along the way shows that, well, quite frankly, you can't really be entirely certain of love until you know and love yourself.

Okay, wait, was that just a bad example of what I'm trying to explain? You see, it's just so hard to explain to you the concept of love, even when it comes to loving yourself. I suppose that I could just sit here and tell everyone, "Hey, just...go out there and, uh...experience it all for yourself. You'll learn!" But I want to try to make an effort to explain this utterly insane part of life that can send us to the highest heavens or bring us to the deepest depths of hell.

Let's at least admit this: when you are confident in yourself, you have goals, and you really know what you're living for, you feel awesome, on top of the world, relieved of any stresses and people that might try to bring you down. When you are on this high pedestal, you may still be cautious of who you trust and who you may express an interest in, but you really don't care because even if you fall, you still love yourself and know your capabilities.

I suppose that can be my conclusion for this attempt of explaining the concept of loving yourself. It's really hard to sit here and organize all my thoughts on such a complicated subject, but it is better to just spit it all out rather than saying nothing at all.