Self-Love is a topic that has been around for a while now, but even more since it’s the start of the new year and it's next to "go to the gym" on the new years resolution list... I’m sure we all have heard something about self-love and why should practice it… But what exactly is it?

Personally, I thought that self-love was a bunch of jumble that people threw together to gain confidence or some narcissistic idea, but this is when I didn’t truly love myself. Yes, I loved some parts and qualities of myself but I wasn’t in love with myself. It wasn’t until recently when I started to truly love myself.

I originally always thought life was “easy” and that it would be full of rainbows, butterflies, and happy thoughts. Everything in my life was going so great I had amazing friends, a wonderful family, and just overall was always happy.

But then one day you wake up and the old “happy” life you thought you knew and loved crashed and is now broken, and you don’t really know what to do anymore. Everything just gets dark for what feels like forever and suddenly everything is blamed on you, and your once so colorful world is full of grey clouds.

I needed to find how to love myself, and I didn’t know how to start… Pinterest is where I go for anything so I decided to type in “Self-Love Tips” I stumbled across all these inspirational quotes like “You are enough” “You are beautiful” “I believe in me”, of course I set one of these as my phone background to show the world that I certainly do believe in myself, but to be completely honest I didn’t… But you know what they say “Fake it till ya make it”

The spring semester of my senior year in high school is when I really started to fall in love with myself. All of a sudden, this cloud of grief, anger, and all other negative thoughts started to fade away and the sun was starting to peak over them. Everything was starting to fall in place for the first time in a long time. I made a college decision, I rekindled old friendships, graduation was right around the corner, and I realized my importance to the world.

I can say that I truly fell in love with myself my first semester in college, I found people that also love themselves, a seed of independence flourished into an amazing quality, and most importantly I found my purpose in life. Don’t get me wrong I went back to pinterest and did some “self-love” challenges and I listened to some empowering music, but everything I’ve done has been for the best.

I questioned earlier what self-love is, and now I fully understand why loving yourself is probably the best kind of love. I now live every day to the fullest and never regret anything. You only live once, and you’re stuck with yourself forever so might as well love yourself.