What is Love? And Do I Deserve it?
Love. Unconditional love. Conditional love. Is it all a perspective?
I’ve said this before and I will say it again. If Jonny didn’t show me an example of what unconditional love looks like at a time when I was having suicidal thoughts and looking for any reason to validate my fear of being unlovable, I would not be here today. He didn’t make himself responsible for my mental health. He didn’t judge where I was at. He was simply there. Consistently there. Holding me when I needed it. Giving me space when I needed it.
Do we create the conditions on our own? I have felt like the only way for me to be lovable is to be perfect. So every mistake reinforced my belief that I was unlovable. That I wasn’t WORTHY of love. How could anyone love ME. I’m damaged goods. I’m too far gone. I’ll always be like this, so why bother trying to get better? If you really love me, you will stay anyways.
When I am not intentional with my actions, I hurt people. “Unintentionally” hurting someone doesn’t make it okay. It doesn’t make it right, especially if you have hurt them in the exact same way before.
I didn’t love myself and he still loved me. This motivated me to work on myself to be “worthy” of this love. He didn’t see it this way. He saw it as me learning to love myself. He laid the blueprint and now I can learn from him. When I first started my serious healing, I felt like I was still earning it. Like if I keep going to therapy and keep reading self-help books, he will then love me for REAL. This isn’t real, this isn’t something I deserve. This led to other self-sabotaging actions like getting too drunk and fighting with him. I continued to test his devotion to me. It wasn’t until I had already been in therapy for about a year when I fully switched my perspective. This was when I was actually learning to love myself and no longer trying to “earn” his love. I already had it. It’s not enough to want to change to not mess something up. I had to want to change for me, for my future, and use that to continue to build our relationship and strengthen our foundation.
This is why I always say that you don’t have to love yourself to be worthy of love. YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE. It will save SO MUCH TIME and heartache to learn to love yourself before you enter into a relationship. But that wasn’t my reality. I needed to be in the relationship I was in to feel safe and worthy enough to love myself. And a lot of therapy to make sure I learned how to do this in a healthy way. I have co-dependency tendencies so again, I need to be very aware when I start to fall into habits.
When I say “fall into” habits, I mean not being intentional with my time and energy. I mean slipping back into sleeping all day, on my phone zoning out all night, eating trash food, overspending, in general doing all the things that I know I do because I am: procrastinating, avoiding, looking for a quick dopamine rush, etc. And I would choose the temporary, unhealthy option because I hadn’t practiced self-control, self-discipline, follow-through. Things that I need to PRACTICE to get better at. Most of the time, these are a result of me not staying true to my “WHY”. If there isn’t a big enough reason for you to do what you need to do, you may never do it. Practicing goal-setting and follow-through is a necessary part any long-term growth.
I believe I was meant to live my experiences so that I may help others through theirs. For me, that meant healing mentally and going to school for psychology to learn how to best help people that struggle with and experience similar things I have. Maybe someday I will even create a better way to get them the help they need sooner. I want to live in a world that accepts all types of people with all different backgrounds, experiences and preferences. To normalize and not trivialize mental health so people feel empowered to seek the help they need.
With love,
Sharon
