"Love yourself or no one else will"

 Today seemed relatively normal, although it was spent on the couch cuddled up to my little bro watching horror flicks. When I went off to work everything was the same as always, I don't know what I was expecting, I've been trying to distance myself from the idea of a relationship for a long time now. Everything seemed normal, I still thought the same way, wondering if so and so liked me, still worried about my hair and sucking in my tummy, still thinking I could probably get them to ask me out. This is going to be harder than I thought. Its difficult to break out of the norm. Today I found myself trying o walk taller around certain people and still trying to compete with people who seem to have it all figured out. I want to do fun things like going hiking with one of my coworkers who had offered and going paint balling with a couple of friends but even at that point I had looked to the future as though all my crushes would be there and would give us a chance to connect and get them to really like me. In a situation like this I often leave disappointed and ignored, I practically set my self up for failure at just having fun and lets face it, those are the moments that help lead a person to finding out who they are. I want my life to be like the teen romance novels and the cheesy Sparks movies that make every girls toes curl, but that just makes me more reliant on a man, and that's not what I want out of this last summer home, I don't want that "Summer Lovin," if I'm going to fall in love with anyone, I want it to be me. I have tolove me before anyone else can love me.     

The Start

I have had an on going problem for several years now. I find it hard to separate myself from the people around me. I've been caught up in the drama of who likes me, who I like, who people want me to be, and struggling to please everyone. In this storm that everyone calls high school,the place where everyone is supposed to find themselves, I got stuck, caught between the winds and the waves. I was so busy finding everyone else, I forgot to find myself. Now I know this sounds just like the stereotypical complaint for an 18 year old heading off to college, and in someways it is, but it doesn't matter because this is my road to discovery, this is my own story, whether it's like everyone else's or like nothing you've ever read before, this is my story.

There has always been this pressure to find the best boyfriend and be the cutest couple, I read into this way to often and way too deeply. My entire high school career was centered on finding romance. I moved from one crush to another and never got anywhere, even with all of my efforts I was never able to catch anyone. It's easy to admit that you've never been in a relationship when you're 15 and have homecomings and proms and everything in between to look forward to, the idea of being the prom queen still seems possible, at 18, after all the dances and charades have come and gone, the thought of never having had a relationship becomes an embarrassing flaw, and never being kissed is like an insult to all of humanity, and that was my train of thought for a long time. I'm no longer going to base self accomplishments on other peoples time frames. 

I don't know which direction my life is going, I'm being tossed in the air and flying in circles, everyone I thought I new is changing and heading down their own path, most are rediscovering whereas I have yet to discover. Most the time I feel like I'm lost on a road going nowhere. I want to break free from that, from the drama, from the expectations, from social ideals and ludicrous assumptions of what life should be. Therefore, during this brief summer, at the start of my new chapter, I am breaking up with relationships and I'm drowning other people expectations. 

I need to take some time to become myself, to recognize the voice inside my head. I'm doing what I want the way I want to do it. In a few months I hope to be someone else with new perspectives and different outlooks.This is me trying to find me.