This week, my best friend went on a rant as he vented about why he feels insecure and alone.
He told me he is going through a dry spell, something that happens to all of us at some point. (*sigh*)
He said if he could just have someone to casually hook up with, it would make him feel so much better about himself.
When I heard him say this, it made my chest heavy with dejection. To think that someone thinks needs to constantly be engaged in a sexual bond with another person to feel whole is a big problem.
I told him he should be content with himself without needing to be inside someone. He said he has nothing special to offer, and that if someone wanted him on a physical level, his self-esteem wouldn’t be so low.
My best friend is not the only one going through these emotions, sadly. So many people are embodied by loneliness and lack self-worth if they do not have a man or woman to link arms with, or have their legs intertwined with another person when they fall asleep at night.
I’ve been there too. I can’t think of something more pressingly painful than the feeling of falling deeper into the pits of loneliness and low-self esteem.
We’ve all been rejected and it sucks. It makes your head swarm with unwavering thoughts like, “Why doesn’t he/she want me?” “What am I doing wrong?” “What’s wrong with me?”
The answer is simple: You are not doing anything wrong and there is nothing wrong with you. You simply have not met the right person yet.
Unfortunately, no matter how many times or how many ways you tell someone this, it is so much easier to say it than to believe it yourself.
The feeling of loneliness and low-self esteem are rooted within you. There is no person you will sleep with that is going to make you feel any better about yourself. Even if they showered you with compliments and made you feel good in the moment, those feelings will leave with that person the moment he or she walks out of the room.
Waking up next to an unfamiliar face or a face you really don’t care about will not make you feel any more complete on the inside.
You really have to believe you are good enough on your own. You have to know your own worth without someone else telling you how valuable you are.
You will feel forever lonely and have low self-confidence through every laugh, smile, frown, tear and everything in between if you don’t.
A lot of people resort to drugs and alcohol to numb themselves or have temporary “company,” but the momentary fix will leave your system with each drag of a cigarette, each time your lips touch the bottle, each time the needle pierces your vein, each time your mouth leaves the bong.
Even when you are intermingled with the softest hands, the sockets of loneliness will fill up fast.
No drug, no person, no sexual encounter, no amount of social media confirmation will ever foil this imperishable demon that lives inside you.
Loving yourself is the key to your own happiness. Life isn’t about pleasing other people. It’s about pleasing yourself. Would you rather amble through life making sure everyone else had a smile on his or her face but you never did? Or would you rather prance through it knowing you are living your life for yourself and no one else?
The more you spend time on your own, the faster you will learn to love yourself. You don’t have all these distractions impeding your head saying you aren’t good enough. When you begin to hang out with yourself, you WILL start to like things about yourself that you did not appreciate before. You won’t need to always be around people or always have someone to hook up with to make you feel “with it”. If you love your life, and I mean TRULY love it, you will feel satisfied without needing someone at your beck and call.
A person can only manage so long with artificial Band-Aids. It’s like an infection you need to treat, even if it means taking dealing with the daunting pain when the painkillers wear off.
Being your own best friend is a very intense and intimate relationship with yourself.
There is no person on this planet you could spend all your time with and never butt heads, even yourself. All relationships deal with conflict. Have you ever been upset with yourself? Yeah, me too.
But treat yourself like you are your own best friend (which you are!). You talk to yourself more than you talk to anyone else in the world, so make sure you are saying the right things. Before you convince yourself that you are not good enough or tell yourself something negative, think about this: “Would I say these things to my best friend?”
If the answer is no (which it is), then don’t say those things to yourself either.
Your life is the most indispensible thing on this planet, so make sure you treat it as such. Invest in yourself; you will never regret making yourself happy.
