Is there a formula to love? 

As a hopeless romantic I spent most of my teenage years fantasying about love, how it would feel, who it would be with, if it would be like how it was in the movies. I don’t know why I placed such an emphasis on love back then, it seemed like I was missing out on something, like all the issues I had would magically disappear if I found love. Of course, they didn’t, the issues just got pushed under the rug to be dismissed and taken care of on days when I felt well enough to. Spoiler alert: those days never came. 

And so came my first love coma, somewhere around my 16th birthday, and I call it a coma because A) I barely remember it and B) it felt like a coma, one I didn’t wake up from until I got broken up with. It became an addiction, trying to fall in love, trying to feel anything that would take the edge off, and in my mind it was a lot healthier than other methods of addiction. I didn’t realize, not for a long time, that love wasn’t going to fix everything about myself that I hated, in fact all those insecurities just got pushed down further, swirling around aimlessly waiting to be addressed. Love and relationships are a natural part of growing up, but I was using them as a means of escape; it was easy to distract me from myself if I was busy taking care of somebody else. 

My entire life I spent overthinking, overanalyzing, taking the feelings of others in before my own. I thought that if I made the people I surrounded myself with happy, then I would be happy too, it seemed simple. It wasn’t. The more I showed up for others the less I showed up for myself, and along the way I forgot what made me happy and what made me, me. I stopped writing, except for sad poetry when I was drunk on my bathroom floor or on a subway ride home, and I forgot how happy writing made me. From my core I knew I was never great with my words, my subconscious (and all her unresolved issues) often spoke where I lacked the ability to, but I could always write the words I wished I could say.

I would write and write about my love of others, of all the amazing qualities I saw in them and how they made me giggle like a school girl being teased on the playground. Yet, over the years, I found I never wrote about myself, good qualities or bad, I dismissed my existence as secondary to the other characters in my life. Perhaps it was a reflection of how I viewed myself, dismissible, replaceable, easily overlooked, which is humourous because my friends would describe me as anything but. I rarely leave others unimpressed, yet it felt like I was never leaving an impression on myself, at least I never wrote about it. I think I was scared to look at myself, because for every good quality there was a bad, and it’s easier to ignore it altogether than to try and recreate a version of myself that was inauthentic. So I wrote about those I loved, hoping I could fill myself up with the love other’s extended forward. I looked for love between the lines of the words I wrote, creating versions of people in my mind that they would never measure up to.

I didn’t realize how ignoring my problems, and even the existence of myself, in the form I used most desperately to connect and love, was damaging. Not until I woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and realized how tired I was. How disgustingly tired I was of not feeling heard, or seen, or loved. I realized in that moment things had to change, not all at once, but as days ticked by, and I could feel my old confidence coming back, things started to change. I started to change, to fall back in love with the girl I knew I was but had forgotten about for a while. 

Trust me when I tell you no amount of external love is going to fill the void that putters around in your heart, that longing for something more, something satisfying. You could find the most amazing, compatible person for you and that void still won’t be fulfilled, because as corny and stupid as it sounds, until you are able to offer yourself the same love you dish out, you’re never going to feel complete. Perhaps this is why so many people cheat on such incredible partners, they think maybe someone new will appease their cravings. They don't, no one ever will. 

Self love is the hardest love I’ve ever known, and I’ve been in a relationship with myself for 21 years. After ending relationships with people I deeply cared for but could no longer grow beside, I was always left confused, angry, unsatisfied. It felt like I had been trying so desperately hard to love others that I forget to extend that same love back to myself. Love was dished out in quantities large enough to take care of a village, but whenever it wasn’t given back to me I felt hopeless, unloved, uncared for. Unfortunately, this resulted in me projecting those insecurities onto not only partners but also my friends and family; I was so desperate to be loved yet so angry that I felt like no one was loving me in the way I wanted to be that I shut down. I became someone who took care of others before even looking in the mirror and wondering what I needed, what my body was pleading for. I felt so incomplete because the only person who could provide me with the love I was seeking out through others was myself, and it took years to realize that, and a lot of heartbreak. 

As much as I’ve had my heart broken, it was truly myself that broke it the worst. I was in charge of keeping myself happy and satisfied, and I failed, miserably. Outsourcing your happiness to others never works, because no one owes you anything, as harsh as that sounds. People are allowed to leave on their own accord for their personal happiness and healing. Thats why until happiness comes from within, you'll never feel complete, you’ll never really get to experience love in the way its meant to be consumed: with two people so in love with themselves that they better one another by having the capability to extend that love in the purest form to another human being. 

I’m not an expert, in fact I would grade myself on the lower end of the scale in the life course of love; as much as I love love, and I am a hopeless romantic by nature, I can’t classify myself as anything more than a student. I’m learning, and I fail a lot, there’s no concrete course book for teaching yourself self love, its a lot of trial and error, but let me tell you loving the wrong people makes it easier to realize how effortless it is to love yourself. 

The biggest advice I can offer is to stop apologizing for your emotions, for who you are at your core. I cry, a lot. It’s part of who I am and how I release frustration, and I always apologized for it in my relationships because I felt like it made my partners uncomfortable. But I don’t care anymore, I’m a ball of unkept emotions waiting to be addressed and I will no longer apologize for loving too hard and caring too much. 

My friends often tell me the best way to get over someone is to shit talk and gossip and paint a picture in your mind of how much of an asshole your ex is, and sure it helps, and sometimes it can be really, really funny, but it will always be hard to forget the love you once had for someone. Love doesn't disburse because someone screwed you over. Despite tough efforts, my brain isn’t wired for hate, I've never been one to hate an ex. It's hard, to forget the way they made you feel and how good it felt being with them. But, the best cure for a broken heart is providing yourself with the closure they'll never give you. Accept that the love they provided you with no longer serves you, wish them well, and then move the fuck on. Because no matter how much you romanticize an old flame, the fire is still out and you should never relight something that's meant to stay unlit. Love yourself enough to move on, to let go, and to understand it's never going to make perfect sense and you aren't going to get the closure you're so desperate for.

So stop apologizing for loving the wrong person, you’re allowed to, it’s sort of the brickwork of your adolescence, the foundation you need to find the love within yourself. It’s not easy, it’s lonely, and sometimes it feels easier to fill the void with relationship after relationship, but take a break. Sit down with yourself and promise to love yourself, promise to forgive yourself for the hurt you’ve experienced or caused, and understand that there isn’t a proper way to love, there isn’t a secret formula that’s being kept from you. But find the love inside yourself first, peel off the bandages and look at the wounds and take care of them. They will scar, and sometimes rip open again but each time they do it gets easier to deal with it. 

You will get there, and when you do, you will realize how heavenly blissful it is to find all the love you will ever need inside the walls of your own body.