03 / 03: i ordered tea

don’t worry, i didn’t forget about you. 

today’s song: pull it together - greeting committee

i’m still in the process of no longer forgetting about myself, so that’s where i’ve been. i promised to write once a week, but i also promised that when i did write, it would be because i wanted to and not because i felt obligated by a deadline or an expectation. so, for a couple weeks, i didn’t really feel like i had all that much to say. nothing that would’ve made a lasting impact or even really a not-so-lasting impact. i wasn’t even necessarily planning on writing this blog post in this moment, but i think it’s quite fitting for my current situation. 

i’m writing to you from the bar of my favorite coffee shop in my hometown. alone. that’s right, i made plans with myself today. no one is meeting me here later, i’m not advertising to the world that i’m here awaiting a companion, i’m here with just me. i’m taking myself on a date of sorts. i’ve been really struggling with loneliness. being alone and being lonely kind of get all intertwined and mixed up in my brain, so sometimes it’s hard for me to be alone without feeling lonely, but the two are different. 

loneliness is such a deep, core of yourself type of feeling. it’s what you feel when you’re really low, when you can’t even trust the thoughts coming from your own lil brain, ya know? loneliness is something we associate with the dark parts of our lives and our brains. but being alone doesn’t have to be lonely. for plenty of people, sometimes myself included, being alone can be a recharge. as someone who is pretty equally introverted and extroverted, i can tell you there have been plenty of times that i needed to be alone in order to feel like i had any shred of sanity left. 

but in recent months, being alone has felt extremely lonely to me. one of the last times i went through a breakup, i really struggled with being alone and with feeling lonely. i would wake up in tears and remain that way most of the day unless i could find a way to be around people for long enough to stop thinking about everything that was flying at rocket speed through my mind. now, i’m in the end days of my most recent breakup, but i’m also in my hometown, which is really difficult for me. for me, being here feels extremely lonely. 

and now that soph is officially living in new orleans, i have to find a way to be with myself. i thought after my last big relationship that i had spent enough time on my own, but recently discovered that that is just not the case. because now, here i am, in my hometown, best friends all living in other places, and i can’t just sit in my room and cry all day, now can i?

so today, if you can believe it, i’m at a coffee place by myself. that might not sound crazy to you, but it’s wild to me. i’ve always been an independent person, which is also different from simply being able to be alone. i’ve always been able to do things on my own, take care of things on my own, get things done for and by myself. so now, i’m learning to just be with myself. i was listening to new episodes of my favorite podcasts this week and they were both kind of talking about this. one of them was explaining that in order to learn about yourself and get comfortable with yourself, you have to go through that discomfort of being alone, even when you really really don’t want to. you have to sit in the feeling and be really uncomfortable before you can ever start to feel better. and if you just keep ignoring it or deflecting and distracting yourself, how are you supposed to learn to be by yourself in a comfortable way?? the other was saying that one of the best ways to get to know and love yourself is by dating yourself. 

that’s one of my favorite things i’ve heard in quite some time. that i need to date myself. see, i’ll be honest, i made a promise to myself around two weeks ago that i’m gonna be single for an entire consecutive year. it sounds like a long time when you first hear it. but when i think about it, i haven’t been single for a solid year since i started dating people. the last time i was single that long was like middle school. so, i’m taking a full year to be single. and now, i’m taking it to date myself, which sounds like waaayyyy more fun than just deciding to be single. rules are, i’m allowed to do whatever i want, as long as it doesn’t involve the whole stupid talking stage nor officially calling myself someone’s girlfriend. i’m my own girlfriend, which is pretty sick if you ask me. because even if i never want to admit it, i’m pretty cool. see?? doing wonders for my confidence already :)

so cheers to my first date with myself! me and my laptop and a mug of warm earl grey on a wednesday evening, the beginning of a new chapter. all of the stuff between the last chapter and now was more prologue than anything, so you could get a grip of all the inbetweenness that occurred before i was able to get to this point. 

i’m dating me!! and you should to! you should date you, that is, not me. a year, remember? 

you have to date yourself before you can really date other people. for so many reasons, of course, but i’ll go over a few in case you need some extra convincing. 

you gotta learn more about yourself. about your interests, your dislikes, your favorite things to do and drink and eat and see. you have to learn about what you like and what you don’t like, so when the next person appears on the horizon, you know how you want to live. do the things you want a future partner to do so that when they inevitably show up in your life, you’ll know exactly how you deserve and want to be treated and what it should feel like for someone to date you and for you to date someone else. dating yourself also helps you to treat yourself about a thousand times better overall, because check this out. when you date yourself, you have to treat yourself like someone you love. that means no judgy, rude comments, no body shaming, making sure you drink enough water and have home cooked meals more often, cleaning your room and living spaces to make them more comfy n presentable, and a world of other things. 

you have to learn what it’s like to date you, so that you know how how your future partner will feel in a relationship with you. and most importantly, you have to show yourself what it’s like to be treated the way you want to be treated deep down in there. no more settling for people who meet only some of the requirements. no more settling for people who treated you perfectly at the beginning but were lacking pretty hard there at the end. no more settling for people who don’t pick up on the little things it takes to love you. no more settling period. treat yourself the way you want to be treated by others, and begin feeling the way you’re supposed to. 

we all just wanna feel loved, but we forget that the person we spend the most time with, all of our time with, is ourselves. if i don’t love me, why would i ever expect someone else to?? so, instead of deciding that i’m simply stuck with myself, i’m deciding that i am the luckiest goddamn person in the world to be with myself all of the time. i am so unique!! i am so beautiful!! i am a human being and i make mistakes and i make wonderful creations!! i can’t wait to get to know myself, and i’m gonna treat myself so well that the bar will be high over my head. the bare minimum, the least i could expect of a person, will no longer be enough to get me to stick around. 

i deserve amazing things. i deserve a love that burns so brightly you’d have to wear sunglasses in the presence of it. and i’m gonna teach myself the truth of that whether i like it or not. 

the perks of being a wallflower is my favorite movie ever of all time. 

paul rudd said it best, say it with me if you know it. 

we accept the love we think we deserve. 

so, that being said, let’s deserve more. 

we all do, we just have to show ourselves what it looks like.

there is so much beauty in the world, so much love to give and be given. 

big deep breath…

…and let’s do this.

- lola claire <33