I woke up this morning sleep-deprived –I meant to go to bed at 12, then I got a snap at 12:30 and I was up until 4 a.m.

I’m not proud of giving up three hours of sleep the last week of classes – especially to someone I haven’t seen since last semester, who to friends I’d promised I’d put in the past, of whom I scoffed and said, “Like I’d waste my time on a man.”

Anyone who knows me knows I promote self-love to the highest degree: being yourself, not apologizing for yourself, rinsing and repeating. If a Cardi B-induced personality change was a real diagnosis, I’ve got the worst case.

And yet, I still struggle to put my own advice into action.

Every time a friend brings up a man, I say “trash,” I say “drop him,” I say “You’ve seen this before, you know they’re not worth it.”

And yet, 4 a.m. snapchatting.

I know I’m a hypocrite, but there’s a good explanation behind it: I think we’re all just really scared.

NPR recently reported that Americans, especially on the younger side, are suffering from a loneliness epidemic. Most people feel like they aren’t connected to others and feel isolated, like no one really knows them.

I wouldn’t pretend that any amount of self-love can put me above that.

Something I’ve thought about lately, not necessarily gendered but so in this case, is why we give people (especially fuckboys) time when we know they don’t deserve it.

I give people more chances than I’d like to admit. It can be big or small: I know I don’t delete people from social media when we’re long past needing to contact each other. I know I’ve held onto toxic people until I couldn’t handle it anymore.

Semester-long breakdowns can be attributed to situations where I knew that things wouldn’t work out in the end: but despite everything, I stuck by what I knew because I thought the pain would subside.

We’ll meet a million and one people and even with bounce-back time, it’ll hurt.

Whenever something new ends, it’s a whole new tear. Like whenever it works out well with someone, you want to cling onto them, because you know the last person didn't work out. Because you’re worried that no one will.

And I can’t say that I’m not still going to get a pang when I receive “u up?” texts. Something still stings in me whenever I think of what could’ve been. The only thing I can rely on is that this too, shall pass. We live on. We always have.