Life is short lived. It is full of so many amazing experiences, challenges, heartbreaks, constant mixed emotions, so many feelings of questioning who we are and what we even amount too, feelings of self-love, self-hate, wishing we were different, wishing what our lives would be like if we had just said that one thing but hesitated because we were too scared. Life is hard. It can suck more than it can be enjoyable but it really doesn’t have too. I’m a firm believer in love. Not just that super gooey, honeymoon phase of love where everything just flows. I am a firm believer in TRUE, unconditional love and being able to give that outside of a romantic relationship.

Love is not a word we hear enough. It isn’t something people just say for a list of reasons. Maybe someone is scared to say it. Maybe someone has been heartbroken before to the point of no return and the word makes him or her sick. Maybe they just don’t know how to love? Maybe they are scared of what could happen if they DID say it? But why do they have to be scared? Why do they have to feel as if they cannot open up and give an unconditional selflessness love?

Time and time again we have heard the saying, “You have to learn to love yourself FIRST before you can love someone else (or be loved).” Bullshit. To me, this is the farthest thing from true. There have been multiple times in my life where I have struggled to love myself as a person. I have struggled to find the good qualities in myself that make me who I am. I have struggled to believe that someone like me facing real challenging issues could ever be loved. A person can only convince themselves of something so many times until they really believe it is true. This was me when it came to that one word. I couldn’t love someone else because I didn’t even love myself. Nobody could love me because I did not love myself. But I quickly realized with the help of those around me, I was wrong.

I feel like in order to love yourself you HAVE to be loved first. Think about it like this: when we are born, we aren’t born with the immediate instinct to love someone. We are TAUGHT this. We are taught growing up to share, we are taught growing up to be nice, we are taught growing up to LOVE. It is a learned behavior. When I got to college, I struggled the most with self-love because as I said before, I did not know what I loved about myself as a person. And this became problematic. But over a course of time with the individuals I surrounded myself with, I started to grasp a different concept of what it really meant. The people I surrounded myself with were passionate, inspiring, motivated, driven and most important they never let me go a day feeling like I wasn’t worth a flip. Because they loved me unconditionally I started to love little things about myself slowly but surely. It is something that I am still working on constantly every single day to be the best version of myself I possibly can.

I know it sounds silly. I know it sounds cliché and I know it sounds like something most people don’t want to hear because we are in constant denial that we could love anyone but ourselves but it is so important to stress love and stress spreading love.

When is the last time you told someone you loved them? And not just say it, not just saying the word but genuinely mean that you LOVE them with everything you have to offer. When was the last time you looked at a friend, parent, sibling, significant other, a sister in your sorority, a brother in your fraternity, someone who has helped you tremendously in your life…..and said “I love you.” It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, trust me. It is literally taking a leap of faith and hoping that the individual feels the same about in return, But I want you to know whoever is reading this even if they don’t say it back, even if it takes them a while for the three words to set in, even if you feel like you pushed them away.. you did something most people can’t and I couldn’t praise you enough for that.

So with that being said, don’t you think it’s time? God forbid you love someone other than yourself.