I’m what you call a “serial monogamist.” It is a phrase deemed to those of us who love to love people, who give their all, and are always in a long term relationship. I have not been single for more than a month or two since I was 12 years old. This lifestyle is a type of commitment. It isn’t always a healthy one though. It is one that teaches you to rely on others needing you, and one that can seem very tempting, all-the-while it is ruining you. More than once I thought I would get married young -- I planned on being married by 18, and living this life full of love and with beautiful children (though once I compromised to give up my dream of having children for someone) and living my happily-ever-after. What I didn’t realize about the lifestyle I lived is that just because you love someone doesn’t mean love can fix everything. Unfortunately it cannot. It cannot make me whole -- though I really wish it could -- and sometimes, loving someone like they are the only thing keeping you breathing while they are always on the fence about you can mess you up in ways that you cannot imagine.

I am a victim of emotional abuse. Not just by one person. By many. I am sure this seems hard to believe from the guy who has the tattoo “heart over mind” and who has so much love to give, but no matter what kind of love I give, I always remained so desperate to keep the people I loved as mine, that I failed to see every single time they destroyed me could not be forgiven just based on love alone. I have been petty. I have said things I didn’t mean, and I didn’t learn to love someone properly until I lost the one person I loved above all else.

Each relationship I have been in has changed me. The ball of mush that I am has not always been visible. I have often been noted as cold, hard, difficult, judgmental, hard to read, and an enigma. The fluffy interior has long been invisible because of the amount of walls I put up to protect that person inside. That person has so much to give, and once you make me fall, you could take everything from me. I’d let you take the air from my lungs. I am an unbearable amount of cliche and hopeless romantic all compiled into one person, who used to sooner let you chop off one of my fingers than ever been seen by anyone that wasn’t my lover. But the trauma I endured has always been (though unbearably painful) remarkably helpful in my self-growth.

You see, I thought that loving meant that someone will see past all your flaws, all your worry, and they would love you endlessly and those things never needed to be addressed of adjusted, but what I have found is that I have been an incredibly unstable person to be with. Between explosive anger, fits of jealousy, and an extreme amount of distrust for any partner, I am almost the most difficult person to love. And yet, by miracle, I found people who loved me, until it was no longer convenient for them. The amount of degradation, and hurtful words, along with constantly being cheated on had left me in a toxic spiral of losing my mind.

You see, when I love someone, I would give them everything, but also, I try to take the focus off of me. I try to use love as a way to cope with an enormous amount of self-loathing, and until this was all pointed out to me, I lived my life constantly losing my grip on myself and thinking that this world was better off without me. The truth is -- love won’t save you. My ex despised this phrase that has been tattooed onto my leg, she thought that it was a terrible way to think, but these days it keeps me grounded. Love won’t save me from myself. If my inner brain is screaming, I can’t use loving someone as a distraction for the fact that I would have rather died than live in my own brain for a second longer. Being with someone who hates themselves that much is hard, because while you think they are okay, they are dying inside to get out of their own skin: this is the unfortunate truth.

When I lost my last love, I set out on a mission to fix everything that she pointed out to me -- this may seem crass, but it was a wake up call that I had needed more than anything else in the entire world. I learned about love, about trust, about friendship, and more about myself than I could have ever imagined. I finally started talking about my anxiety and my depression, I started to acknowledge and actually deal with the losses and emotional abuse I endured, I started to understand how I push people away when I needed them most, and I learned why I hated myself so much for so many more reasons than the obvious. But when I lost her in the entirety, despite immense pain, I started to learn how to love myself by putting myself first. I always knew that I needed to respect myself more, I knew how to do that, but sometimes respecting yourself is hard when everything that you love -- your whole entire heart and world -- is on the line. You become willing to sacrifice everything, even your dignity, to keep them.

The people who love you will respect you, they won’t ask you to give up your self respect for them -- not even unintentionally. Maybe my ex never loved me (she did tell me that after things ended) but she taught me a lesson, the lesson that I needed more than anything; it’s okay to let go of your heart in order to be able to live peacefully inside your own brain, it’s okay to walk away from someone you love because sometimes it is what is best for the both of you.

Putting myself first is the most selfish thing I have ever done, but it has now preserved my sanity. Putting yourself first doesn’t have to mean building walls, it just means building boundaries, having an understanding of yourself, understanding what you need from someone, understanding that you’re not ready or you’re not perfect and that you are still a work in progress. It is being able to stop and think about yourself for once, instead of everyone else, acknowledging that something may not be healthy for you, that you don’t have to say yes to everyone and that doesn’t make you a fun killer, it means that you have the power to understand that you matter too and always putting yourself on the line is probably killing you in the way that it was killing me. You cannot disregard the emotions you are feeling, because you’re not a robot, but you can understand them and start to do things that help you feel those things less or not at all. Putting yourself first is hard, it feels wrong when you use loving someone as a replacement for loving yourself, but it needs to be done, because if you can’t love yourself, loving you becomes taxing for someone else. Whatever you hear about no one can love you until you love yourself is bullshit, it is a complete and utter lie, people have loved me despite my immense pitfalls of self-loathing. However, loving yourself too can also create a healthy relationship or friendship, and though that can be difficult, understanding ourselves and listening to our own needs is imperative for living in both a healthy mind and healthy body.

Since starting this journey, I have noticed that a lot more people want to be my friend, that being myself and being happy have opened up a world of doors for me, and not being so hard on myself has let me find some kind of confidence. I am not perfect, I am still on my journey, and I am still learning lessons every single day, but I am learning how to make healthy choices, and how to be more honest and understanding not only with myself but with others. There are still days where I think this world is better off without me, but I am starting to have less and less of those days and starting to have a moment of pause before letting myself get buried in that pit of despair that I have always been so fond of. I often talk about my fear of being happy. Yes, I am afraid to be happy. I am afraid to be happy because happiness can be torn from us from any minute and leave you in the lowest of low places, not knowing how to even begin getting out of this hole that has enveloped you, but I am learning that happiness is a state of mind that you have to work on at every moment of the day and though it is exhausting beyond compare, it is endlessly rewarding. The man I am today and the child I was in the past are two very different people and to divulge every singular instance of immense trauma from start to finish would do it no justice; what I can tell you is that our lives are a journey where sometimes taking the hard road to happiness is the only option, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I am running at it with full force, and getting back up when life knocks me on my ass, and sometimes, that is all we can do. Running, falling, getting up, and doing it again.