HOW TO LOVE
(edit: I wrote this 2 months ago before moving to New York, but I still love it so much. I hope you do too.)
I, at the ripe age of 20, have never been in a relationship. Sure, I’ve been with a slew of cute boys: the nerdy ones, the athletic ones, the super simp ones, the exotic ones, etc. Yet none of those moments never lasted long enough to have a proper “boyfriend,” and recently it’s been on my mind a lot.
Maybe the lack of any physical affection since quarantine is finally getting to my head. Or maybe, it’s just the raging hormones as a Scorpio moon. But yesterday, at midnight, this existential crisis of mine finally came to a climax. I held back tears as I drove the empty streets of my hometown extra slow and extra emo with “How To Love” by Lil Wayne playing on repeat. I was okay, until I wasn’t. And suddenly, I stopped in the middle of a 4-way intersection, put my car in park, and started bawling. Excessive? No, not at all.
However, this post isn’t to tell you about my fragile mental state during emo girl hours. But much rather to tell you about the epiphany that I had at exactly 12:34 in the middle of that 4-way intersection, as I repeatedly asked myself aloud “why does no one love me?”
There are many viable answers, but I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities:
1.) The Plight of a Working Gal
So far this year, amidst a global pandemic and a nationwide quarantine, I have lived in 5 different states, traveled to 3 different countries and spent over 55 hours on airplanes. My life moves pretty fast, and I sure as hell don’t intend on slowing down anytime soon. One day I’m here and the next I’m across the country. No one can seem to keep track of my whereabouts, and frankly, I can’t either. A lot of people from my hometown have a pretty set path for their lives: go to college, join a sorority, find a boyfriend, get a good job, marry said boyfriend, have kids, and live out their wholesome lives in American suburbia. That sounds like a wonderful and stable way to live life- but I’m anything but stable. So my plan sounds more like this:
Find a college as with no ties to home
Shag a bit
Move to a different country
Wear insane clothes as I attend insane parties
Cultivate my passion and work extremely hard
Make Forbes 30 under 30
Get Jadon Sancho to slide into my DM’s
Who knows, possibly shag a little more (hi mom, i’m just kidding)
Therefore, I guess I haven’t been able to find someone that matches my ambitious goals and the standards I’ve personally set for myself. My life is constantly moving at 100 miles per hour, and I don’t think I could/would slow down the pace of my life down to match someone else’s. So the only option, I guess, would be to find someone moving at 101 miles an hour. That’s pretty hard to find- but not impossible.
Until then, I’ll continue to have emo single girl hours every so often, drink in excess, and pick up cute Italian boys.
2.) Being an Insecure Bitch
The second possibility is less romantic and kind of a slap in the face. But, it’s also the more honest answer.
I grew up in an environment where school and my future was prioritized and relationships were put on the back burner. I was never really encouraged to flirt, or find a boyfriend, or learn how to connect with a boy on a deeper level.
Beyond that, I grew up ugly. There I said it. As a teen, I was pretty damn un-cute. To this day, I would place large bets that no boy ever liked me between the ages of 10-17. (However, if you’re reading this and you did like me during this period, text me would ya.) As much as that period sucked in the love department, I wouldn’t change it for a thing. It’s how I cultivated the killer spontaneous personality and sense of humor I have today. Now, I can run circles around all those cardboard bitches who had back-to-back middle school boyfriends.
Around the age of 17, I began to care more about how I looked and started interacting with guys in situations where they weren’t asking me about math homework. Until then, every school dance I was asked to was absolutely platonic. I hadn’t had my first kiss, I hadn’t hung out with a boy alone, I hadn’t even ever been on a date- and then everything hit me like a fucking tsunami.
Almost overnight, I lost weight, got my eyebrows done, and had a newfound sense confidence that came along with knowing that I would never have to see someone from high school again after graduation. This confidence only went as far as to push me out of my comfort zone to go on the wildest of adventures and live life to the fullest. However, it didn’t go as far as to make me confident in my appearance or how I looked. I always internally assumed I was the least attractive person in a room. Every time I was hit on, I would assume it was a joke or out of pity. I never once believed I was beautiful, and I’m not sure if I completely believe it to this day.
I once heard this somewhere (edit: it was the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower) and it stuck with me:
We accept the love we think we deserve.
And I think that somewhere inside me, the ugly ass 6th girl still believes she’s undeserving of being loved.
So, chances are, it’s my fault that I’m still single.
Nowadays, when I walk through clubs and nice restaurants, men stop to check me out from head to toe in all of my 5’8” glory. I have friends and random girls who repeatedly tell me they wish they could look like me. I get loads of DM’s from boys that I went to high school with. The same boys who I used to pass in the hallways and think: “I wish I was pretty enough for them.” And yet, after all of that, I still sometimes believe I’m not beautiful enough to deserve love from another human. But I’m working on it.
Remember that you are so much more powerful and beautiful than you know- and so am I.
