The world of my inner | journal

February 25 - 2024

I wanna talk about love. Because it is something I've never taken for granted. Something a lot of people do. And I know I've been very critical and analytical before but I want to talk about something that is so important to me, something I value so high. Love.

I never thought I was worthy of being loved. I didn't think that would ever have the opportunity presented to me. I had to find a way to be content with being by myself because no one ever showed me that attention when I was younger. No one told me I looked pretty. No one looked at me in that way. I saw my friends and classmates get boyfriends, have their first kisses, lose their virginities, date, fall in love, be swarmed with attention from boys. And that never happened to me. Not until I was like 17-18 years old.

First time, I ever caught feelings for someone, I got screwed over. He showed me attention and I was so happy because that had never happened before. And then a week over he told me he wanted to stop seeing me. And I was crushed. And instantly I turned to myself and I looked myself in the mirror and started doubting myself. For once someone showed me some attention and showed me interest but I thought I wasn't good enough or worthy enough to keep that in my life. I wasn't pretty enough, I told myself. I needed to change myself so boys showed me attention. And I developed an eating disorder because of it. Because I got obsessed with being good enough and worthy enough and then it all escalated to something else.

I didn't think that love would happen to me. Not genuine love. At first I didn't even think boys would pay attention to me because I wasn't attractive enough. Then when I started changing my appearance and they showed me interest, I didn't realise that it was because of the wrong reasons. I was just so happy and relieved I was getting attention. I didn't care that I had an eating disorder that was killing me, at least I was skinny and boys thought I looked pretty. And I need to put in a disclaimer here, this is not a healthy mindset. Trust me. This is not how you get the right guys. You don't change your appearance for someone else, you don't change your appearance to get boys attention. No. It's not a healthy mindset and I don't advocate for it.

But I started attracting the wrong guys. The ones who honestly didn't care about me as a person. But I still couldn't see that. I was in a mindset that only people who suffered from mental health issues similar to mine can understand. But I didn't care who I was dating or seeing. Because I just needed to prove to myself that I was pretty enough so I could stop starving myself. But of course, eating disorders doesn't work like that. You don't just stop one day and everything is fine. It just doesn't work like that.
Anyways.

Like I said before, I didn't think I would ever meet someone who loved me for who I was. Who would appreciate all my quirks. Who would be able to understand me and what I had gone through or was going through. Who would put up with me when I was struggling. I didn't think that would happen. I saw myself as a liability, a burden. But then, something incredibly significant happened. After one failed relationship and a few months of recovering from that breakup. Things turned for me. It's weird because I realised this not too long ago. When I met my boyfriend, everything I was struggling with disappeared. Not entirely but to a manageable scale. My relationship with my ex was toxic, I was struggling so hard with my mental health and I took it out on him and I was honestly the problem in that relationship. I have to be honest about that. Because for so long I blamed him for leaving me when in fact, I had given him every reason to leave. But with him, everything felt hard, kind of like a competition. Like, who could leave a snap unopened for the longest. Who could stay out of touch the longest. I mean it was a childish behaviour that I'm not proud of. But my point is, the relationship between us was just wrong. But when I met my boyfriend, all my struggles was like gone with the wind. Everything felt easy. Light. Like I could finally breathe again. My mood and my mindset changed instantly. I was so happy, sunny, light. I still struggled with like eating on fast food restaurants and stuff but things just didn't feel the same. I didn't walk around with a constant crippling anxiety. I didn't think about food as much. I became myself again. And he saw me for who I was and accepted that. He accepts that I will probably never be able to eat at McDonalds or eat takeout pizza. He accepts that I have days where I feel like life is absolute shit and I don't know what to do but cry and scream. He accepts me for who I am and everything that comes with it.

And it's the beautiful thing with love because when you meet the right person, you don't care if they struggle with this or that because it's a part of their life and you as a partner wants to be there. You want to be there to support, someone they can lean on. And I've also realised that it doesn't matter what life throws at the two of you because you fight through it. You don't give up. When you meet the one, you never give up. Every relationship struggles but in the end, if it is the one, neither of you will give up and you will work through it. And you will be better because of it.

Both my boyfriend and I are pretty strong individuals with strong characteristics and personalities and we both are good on our own. We both know they we will be fine alone and we both need to spend time alone. But in the end of the day, there is no one I would rather get a text from, or a call from. There is no one I would rather see on a Saturday night. I don't want to wake up next to someone else. I don't want to get attention from some other guy. I want attention from my guy. I would much rather stay at home with him, watching movies, playing Wii or whatever, than go out to a club. I don't want to be in the position where I'm without him. He is my rock. Even if we don't live with each other yet, I know I'm gonna build a house with this guy, we are gonna raise a family together, we are gonna get a dog together, we are gonna spend Saturdays watching our son play soccer, we are gonna have game nights with our friends and their kids. I know that whatever I do in life won't be as important as building a life with him. He is my best friend and him and I are one day gonna sit in our backyard watching our kids play with their friends.

And I think when you know you've found the one is after you have had your moments in your relationship, both good and bad. You know each other's pros and cons. You know how to deliver information to each other. You know what topics to not bring up. You know what makes your partner happy. You know what they prefer to drink at dinner. You can obviously have a gut feeling when you start seeing someone, but my gut feeling when I met my boyfriend was that we were just gonna be a summer fling. But that gut feeling went out of the window after a week. But back to the point. I don't think you can know that this is the person I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with after a month or two. You have to have gone through good and bad times to see if it's worth fighting for. And in my case, my guy is worth every ounce of fight I have in me and then some. I always stand up for my guy. I never call him out when we are around friends. I always have his back. No matter what. I will always make sure he feels at home when he is around me. That he is safe. That he can talk to me. That it isn't a big deal to talk about emotions with me. That it is okay to cry in front of me. I will never make my guy feel embarrassed or less masculine for showing emotions or talking about his feeling or thoughts because that is a bitchy behaviour. I honestly don't understand why women want men who are emotionally numb. That never talks about what they are feeling or sharing their thoughts. Why do women want men who are masculine rocks? I don't get it.

And love for me is something you work for, something you fight for. You don't give up on love if it's not absolutely necessary. And I don't just say I love you after a week. Because for me those three words have meaning and purpose. When say I love you to me, then you have committed to me and you fight or work for this relationship. And you are supposed to work on your relationship, it will never just go automatically. Then you will come to a point where the honeymoon is over and it's just dull. You have to put in some effort and some work.

But it's a beautiful thing to fall in love, you are all giddy and nervous, you have butterflies in your stomach and your heart skip a beat. You see each other almost every single day and life is just bright and sunny. And you have to work to keep it bright and sunny. I still feel butterflies when I see my boyfriend, and that's after almost 2 years together. I still feel like my heart skips a beat and no one makes me smile like he does. I can miss the time when we were newly in love and the summer was just perfect and everything was just so beautiful. But now, it's a whole other way of beautiful. Because we are building a foundation to stand on. We don't see each other as much as we did in the beginning but it doesn't matter because we both know how much we love each other. And care for one another.

He is my guy, and he the most amazing and astonishing man I've met. He makes my life so much better. He makes me a better person. A happier person. A healthier person. A more content and peaceful person. He makes me feel safe and he lets me be myself in all shapes and sizes. He doesn't care if I gain weight or if I have a little pouch on my lower stomach.
He loves me for who I am. And that is all that matters.