The Cynical Truth about Loving Yourself

I see why so much independence has cultivated in you once you’re 30: people really give you s__t once you’ve turned 18.

Friends become distant; the only definition people know of ‘relationship’ turns out to be ‘resource.’ You have to prove to everyone your worth; convince everyone you’re happy. By 23, you’ve given up on the world – you start to feel alone and hopeless.

Are my friends really my friends?

Did I choose the right career path?

Do I love my life?

Am I happy?

You start to doubt your place and existence in the world. And the worst part? You know you have a purpose on this planet — it’s been on the tip of your tongue for quite some time now.

But by the turn of the 23rd age, after you’ve had enough experience to last a while –after you’ve had enough of allowing yourself to be used and abused by it, and everyone else – you start to settle in to yourself, if for nothing more than exhaustion.

You straighten up, and tell yourself,” self, let’s be done with the bullshit already,” and you turn to your passion, because, really, that’s all you have left, and all you had to begin with.

By your mid 20s you start to realize that it’s not just a saying,” you only get one life;” that they mean it when they say you only have yours to worry about; that no one besides yourself is going to love you better than you.

This isn’t cynical. It’s the truth.

And it’s okay to love yourself. It happens through realizations about the moments in the world that are unfortunate, and actualizing your place in them. It takes guts to find yourself – chances are you aren’t making massive discoveries about yourself while you’re surfing the waves somewhere far-off from the mainland. Most of the time, those moments that birth new self-realizations are those that are incurred in times of isolation, or hardship, or even tough decisions.

Loving yourself comes from never settling – not for anyone, not to get to any place, not to live any certain life. It’s in those moments when you choose what’s right for you, despite the comforts of the alternative (acceptance, or love or what have you) that you realize your purpose and your worth, and what you think you deserve.

I’m only 23 myself, but I’m guessing that by 30, with 7 more years of who-knows-what, I’ll be a lot closer to accepting me for me. I’ll be done with the makeup and the clothes, and the clubs and the dates, and the gossip and the empty acquaintances. I’ll be at a place where I keep good people around me, in an environment that cultivates true relationship – just a pure bond of mutual affection.

Or maybe I’m tired now. And this is me reaching my threshold – this is my self-declaration: I am choosing a good life. I am choosing good people. I am choosing a life that’s meant to be lived; I am choosing passion. I am choosing honesty, and the people who practice it.

23 years, and I’ve finally decided to choose what’s good for me.