For a long time, I have always thought that I should be the one finding people. Instead, I have not found myself. Throughout our lives, it is essential to build on our social skills to form healthy relationships. It's a part of out human nature. However, it may come to be more difficult to build on these skills for some people than others.

For me, I've never been a social butterfly and always struggled to find meaningful relationships.

I thought that I should explore and just meet new people. I would go out and blindly date so I could learn to cope with different types of people. I believed that this was a good way for me to learn about myself and be tolerant of others. The bittersweet truth is that I don't know myself; I did not love myself enough to find quality people to be with.

I was valuing quantity over quality.

There is a dirty little secret that kept ignoring and pretending wasn't true:

If you can't love someone else if you don't love yourself.

I did not give myself the time to accept my quirks and personality, I just kept going faster and faster on the railroad tracks with no calculation of what direction I was taking.

It all came to a stop when the fun was over and I felt incredibly more lonely than I was before I met that person.

There are things I absolutely do not tolerate in friends and relationships, and I have to remind myself that that is OK!

Whether that makes me look like a bitch or a cold person should not really matter. That idea is probably all in my head anyway, and I sincerely doubt I appear that way all the time. No one really cares what you think anyway. Appearances in this day and age are so superficial and they truly don't matter

Anyway, the main point I want to make here is that there are aspects I need to come to terms with and to self-accept. The good, the bad and the ugly. And for Pete's sake, no dating or succumbing to the unrealistic expectation that I always have to have a social life. Believe me, not everyone, even the popular kids, are always leading a life where they go to Vegas, or even the bars, every weekend.

So, before you blindly get on that train of thinking you need to have all the friends and live the most sociable life, think about the direction you want to go, how fast you want to go and where the destination is.

For me, I know that I want to take it slow, appreciate the people that are in my life now, and accomplish my goals in college.