For most of my life, I thought the problem was that I kept choosing the wrong people.
And I did.
I loved hard.
Too hard sometimes.
Too fast.
I could make someone important before they had done anything to earn that kind of place in my life.
I changed plans.
Made room.
Ignored things I knew.
Stayed longer than I should have.
Gave more chances than some people deserved.
I made decisions based on people who should never have had that much influence over my life.
And for a long time, I called all of that love.
Some of it was.
But some of it was something harder to admit.
I wanted to be chosen.
Badly.
Sometimes so badly that I cared more about being chosen than I cared about who was doing the choosing.
I wasn’t always asking,
Is this good for me?
Do I even want this?
Does this life feel like mine?
I was asking,
Do they want me?
And those are very different questions.
I think there was a part of me that believed if someone loved me enough,
wanted me enough,
needed me enough,
then maybe something inside me would finally feel settled.
Maybe I would feel enough.
Maybe whatever I was trying so hard not to feel would finally quiet down.
So I filled spaces in myself with other people.
I made them bigger than they were.
Gave them more power than they had earned.
And somewhere in all of that,
my own voice got quieter.
Not because I didn’t have one.
I did.
I have always had opinions.
Feelings.
Instincts.
Wants.
I just got very good at overriding them.
At convincing myself something was okay when it wasn’t.
At making room for someone else’s needs before I had even figured out my own.
At asking what everyone else wanted and treating whatever was left over as enough for me.
Looking back, I think that might be the hardest truth in all of this.
What if the biggest betrayal of my life didn’t come from someone else? What if it came every time I abandoned myself for someone else?
I spent years being hurt by what other people did to me without really looking at all the ways I was leaving myself too.
I handed people pieces of myself before they had shown me they knew how to hold them.
And when they dropped them,
I blamed myself for breaking.
I did that enough times that eventually something in me changed.
I didn’t become cautious.
I became closed.
There is a difference.
I stopped giving people such easy access to me.
I learned how to keep certain parts of myself behind a door.
Until someone made me believe that being fully seen didn’t have to feel dangerous.
For a little while, I let more of myself exist out loud.
I could still laugh.
Still love.
Still show up.
Still be the person everyone counted on.
But there were pieces of me I stopped letting anyone touch.
I thought that was strength for a while.
Maybe some of it was.
Some of it was also exhaustion.
Because being closed off does protect you.
But it also gets lonely inside yourself.
And I am tired of both extremes.
I don’t want to keep giving myself away.
I also don’t want to keep hiding from my own life.
I want something different now.
I want to know what I want before I ask what everyone else wants.
That sounds simple.
It isn’t.
What makes me happy when nobody else is standing beside me?
What gives me peace?
What makes me excited to wake up?
I want to know what kind of home feels like mine.
What kind of mornings I want.
Where I want to go.
What I want to see.
What I do with an afternoon that belongs completely to me.
I want to take my camera somewhere because something is beautiful and I want to remember it.
Coffee somewhere I’ve never been.
Music too loud in the car.
A road I haven’t driven.
Plans made at the last minute.
Slow mornings when I want them.
A full calendar when I want that too.
I want to change my mind.
Try something and decide I hate it.
Discover things I didn’t know I loved.
And I want joy to stop feeling selfish.
I want to be able to say,
this makes me happy,
and let that be enough.
To say,
this isn’t good for me,
without building a case to justify it.
To say,
I don’t want that,
without immediately worrying about who I disappointed.
To say,
I want more,
without feeling ungrateful for what I already have.
I want my own voice to become the one I hear first.
That might be the hardest part.
Because for a long time, I measured so much of myself through other people.
What they needed.
How they saw me.
Whether they stayed.
Whether they were okay.
Whether I was enough for them.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing that.
I want to know what enough feels like from the inside.
Not in some perfectly healed, inspirational way where I suddenly don’t need anyone.
I need people.
I love people.
That isn’t something I want to change.
I just don’t want connection to require me to stop hearing myself.
Someone else’s happiness does not automatically outrank mine.
Choosing something because it is good for me does not make me selfish.
Wanting peace does not make me difficult.
Wanting joy does not make me irresponsible.
Wanting a life that feels like mine does not require an apology.
Maybe I spent so much time worrying about becoming selfish that I never noticed how often I was leaving myself out completely.
And I matter too.
That sentence shouldn’t feel revolutionary.
But sometimes it does.
I matter too.
My peace matters.
My joy matters.
My voice matters.
The things that make me feel alive matter.
Not after everybody else is okay.
Not when everything is finished.
Not when someone gives me permission.
Now.
That is what I am looking for.
Not another person.
Not another version of myself shaped around what somebody else needs.
Me.
The version underneath all of it.
The impulsive girl who still wants an adventure.
The woman who has lived enough life to know that not every feeling needs to become a decision.
The soft part.
The loud part.
The part that laughs too hard.
The part that changes her mind.
The part that wants peace and still wants excitement.
The part that does not need to be useful every second of the day to deserve her place in the world.
All of her.
Loving myself probably will not look like some huge transformation.
It might just look like finally listening.
Paying attention when something inside me says no.
Paying attention when it says yes.
Noticing what makes my shoulders drop.
What makes me laugh.
What makes me curious.
What gives me energy.
What makes me think,
I want more of this.
And trusting myself enough to follow it.
I spent a lot of years giving pieces of myself away.
Then I spent years protecting what was left.
Now I want them back.
Not so I can keep them locked away.
Not so I can eventually hand them to someone else.
For me.
I want to know the woman they belong to.
I want to build a life she actually wants to wake up inside.
Peace without wondering when it will disappear.
Joy without apologizing for it.
A voice she does not silence just because somebody else is speaking louder.
A life that feels like hers before it belongs to anyone else.
And someday I may choose to share pieces of that life.
But they will be mine first.
That is the part I was missing.
Before I decide what parts of myself I have to give anyone else, I want to finally know what it feels like to belong completely to me.
