20 Days In, 70 to Go

Here we are, we’ve made it twenty days into this journey and I can safely say my heart feels and acts differently. The first twenty days weren’t easy. There were times where my attention strayed from myself and I fell back into old habits of looking for attention and love from others simply because the thought of choosing myself felt like a lot of work. And it is.

I’m not going to lie, this has been a challenging experience because by all accounts, I’m undoing fifteen years’ worth of habitualizing myself to think I was only worthy of receiving love from others, never myself. Drawing my attention back to me time and time again has not been without it’s obstacles. Just the other day I found myself trying to find an escape from me. I wasn’t anxious or nervous, I was simply bored of coming back to myself. So I turned to my usual escape, looking for love from others. But this time, it felt empty and it fell short. It was almost as though the effort it took for me to extract from others what I could easily extract from myself, took all the joy out of it. The thrill and the hype was gone. On day twenty, it’s as though I’ve actually learned how to love myself to such a degree that the thought of settling for a subpar effort on someone else’s behalf is wholly unappealing.

It's no surprise though that old habits die hard. It’s not like I didn’t try old tricks to solicit a response in myself that would feel gratifying and whole. It’s not like I didn’t try old methods that would get me what I sought: attention and maybe even care. But this time, each time I made an effort I felt like I was being disloyal to myself and perhaps I was. I know we’re in the very early stages of learning how to heal our own hearts but even this early in the scenario, I’ve learned that I’m better at caring for myself than I thought. I also learned that I really, really hate letting myself down. The thought of disappointing my own heart and soul is what drives me to rewrite the rules of self-love and understanding. There’s a reason I’ve been deliberate about not leaning into the advice or guidance of others. It’s not because I don’t trust them or don’t believe that their methods can work. It’s because I have spent too many years trying to follow others as opposed to listening to myself. So in this one, specific and highly important instance- I need to figure out what it means to learn how to love myself. It’s through trial and error. Sometimes a lot of error. But At the end of the day, it is me who comes home to me. It’s me who looks in the mirror and sees the marked difference in how I am reflected back. And it’s me who needs to be able to love myself even when someone else doesn’t/ I am the guardian of my own heart and soul and no rule book, no advice column, no other person can show me the way back to myself. It has to be me to me and for the first time in my life, I’m okay with that.