So, recently, I watched Daniel Sloss, a stand-up comedian's whose live shows just made an appearance on Netflix. First of all, if you haven't already watched, there are two hour-long episodes, "Dark" and "Jigsaw," that not only make you cry laughing but also tug at your heartstrings a lot. He talks about everything, from veganism to his sex-life to the death of his sister. But one topic that he touched on that stood out the most to me happened to be when he discussed love and the concept of "the one."

Now, I won't reveal too much about this because I highly recommend that you watch them yourself, but as he's talking about the advice that his dad gave him regarding what the meaning of life is when he was seven years old, he naturally tried to relate it to something a seven-year-old could understand -- a jigsaw puzzle that everyone has lost the box to, so they must start from the outside and work their way in. The center of the puzzle, his dad said, was the partner piece -- the piece that only "the one" could help to fill and put together with you.

Sloss then goes on to say this, which I've been thinking about for the past week since I watched this: "What it manifested in my seven-year-old brain was this, 'If you are not with someone, you are broken. If you are not with someone, you are incomplete. If you are not with someone, you are not whole.' And that's not just something my dad made me feel, that's something that we as a society have made every single child in the last 40 years feel...Every relationship on the outside is perfect because none of us are willing to admit that none of us know what the fuck we're doing.

And when you raise children in that world where everything points towards love and everything's perfect from the outside...when we become an adult for the first time in our late teens and our early 20's...we're so trying to be an adult that some of us will take the wrong person, the wrong jigsaw piece, and just fucking jam them into our jigsaw anyway, denying that they clearly don't fit...We'll force this person into our lives because we'd much rather have something than nothing."

At first, this part of the episode was hard for me to watch, mostly because it hit so close to home for me because I'm not afraid to say that I relate to that way too much. I compromise myself and who I am, I've changed myself for relationships so many times before just to fit my partner and their expectations.

I hold myself to impossible standards when in reality, whoever I'm with should love 100% of me, even the bits that annoy the crap out of them, because I love 100% of who I'm with -- always. Neither of us should have to change for the other. Sure, compromises are necessary sometimes, but I refuse to compromise who I am as a person anymore. I refuse to be anything but myself.

Sloss also says later on, "My generation has become so obsessed with starting the rest of their lives, that they have given up the one that they are currently living. We have romanticized the idea of romance, and it is cancerous. People are more in love with the idea of love than the person that they are with...A bunch of people who never took the time to be alone, therefore never learned how to love themselves."

I think most people like me feel like love is impossible. We see others in happy relationships and wonder, "How the fuck are they doing it? What's wrong with me?" I'm here to tell you that there's nothing wrong with you. But that you also need to love yourself before you can love anyone else in this world. You need to be comfortable with yourself before you can be comfortable with anyone else. You need to accept yourself before someone else can accept you.

Maybe I'm a hypocrite because I don't love myself -- I'll be the first to admit that -- but I'm learning how to, day by day. There are some days where I think nothing but the best thoughts about myself, but there are still days where I'm stuck in self-loathing. Where I'll still be trying to figure out who I even am.

I'm personally tired of changing myself for someone else, even when I'm not asked to, and not recognizing who's staring back at me in the mirror. As much as I want to be loved and to have a relationship, there is nothing wrong with me being single and trying to figure out my shit. In fact, I need it. I believe that most of us do.

Because romanticizing this idea of "the one" isn't healthy for anyone. It's damaging. I don't believe that there is just one person that can show you everything you're missing out on in life. I believe that that responsibility is up to you, and I sincerely hope that we all live up to that.