Being Single, Free & Learning To Love Yourself

The greatest service you can do in life for anyone is learning how to love yourself.

Today I watched How To Be Single randomly and honestly I was expecting it to be this big jokester of a film that had no real point to it. But by the end of it I realized that it was more than just the jokes that it was trying to tell; it honestly had a great message for the young folks in today's world. Not only did it give some very valid reasons for why you should be single, it also touched on a couple of other topics that most people like to avoid or deal with before they get into something with someone else. They included:

1. Being too independent and stuck in your ways due to being hurt.
2. Being too anxious to be in a relationship or to get married.
3. Being too dependent on being single and the lifestyle that it brings.
4. Jumping from one relationship to another without taking that time to heal after.
5. Not facing personal problems that would hinder growth with another person.
6. Not knowing who you are and having unfinished goals that you want to do badly.

Those are just some of the things that can plague people if they don't spend the proper amount of time alone and learning who they are and what they want out of life. I know a lot of people are together out of convenience or they rush into something pretty fast after being with someone else previously. I'm not different in this regards as I have done both before and both ended on a pretty sour note. It wasn't until I ended it with someone, whom I really loved and cared for, that I realized it was time for me. In that moment I realized that I wasn't ready for a relationship or to be with anyone else because I had too many problems of my own and too many dreams and goals that I haven't accomplished.

And realizing that you need to be alone scares a lot of people.

It's not too many people who have the courage to actually go out and be alone for the necessary amount of time needed to better them. And the scariest thing about it is that there is no set amount of time that you have to be single in order to get to know who you are. For some folks it could take just a month, for others it could take some years; it all depends on your life and where you're at in it. And for all of the people that go looking for a formula, please stop, there is no one on this earth that can tell you when you're ready to get back into something with someone. Only you will know when the time is right for you and who is right for you.

This is pretty much where I am at in life. Prior to this writing I had a whole post basically just ranting and raving about how people keep bothering me in regards to dating. People who I never talk to about my dating life or what my plans are continuously say that I need to be with someone and that will help me with whatever I'm going through. That way of thinking is toxic and they should realize this. People don't need other people to always fix their problems. People don't need other people to tell them when something is going wrong. Now granted we need other people to vent to sometimes or just to hang out with to distract us or unwind us from worrying about other problems.

We don't need people pushing the stereotypes of having to be with someone to be happy.

I tell people all of the time that I know how to be a good boyfriend. I know how to do all of the right things, how to make a woman feel great and secure. But it's not about what I can do for someone else; it's about what I can do for me. It's about doing the things that I don't feel like having to explain. It's about going out and just being on my own and free to move how I please. Not to say that you can't do that in a relationship, it's just that when I move, I want to move without any recourse. I don't want to pay for dates or have to foot the bill for anything more than my bare necessities.

I want to live my life for me and me alone; and some people honestly can't understand that. They can't understand what it means to do things on your own or to be by yourself for more than a few hours a day and that's the saddest part of this all. There are literally people that will shame you for wanting to spend time inside doing the things that you want to do, rather than going out to the club and being around a whole bunch of people. To be honest, ever since I started being alone and doing the things that I liked, I haven't felt the need to be out in the clubs like that. Yes I go to the bar every now and then, but in terms of feeling like I HAVE to go out, those days are dead.

But that's only because I started to learn who I am  as a person.

There are things that I thought I didn't like and there are things that I thought I did like which I don't like anymore. And that's the big thing I want people to understand, take the time to learn who you are because you never know who that person is if you're too busy pleasing everyone else first and yourself second. You may end up not caring for a lot of the people that you do hang around or realize that you've outgrown a lot of the things that you use to do, that you're currently forcing yourself to do because other people want you to do it. It's ok to love yourself first and everyone else second.

It's ok not to do any of the things that other people say that you should be doing or want you to do. It's ok to go against the norms of society and find out what "weird" things make you smile without even trying. It's ok to go to those places that you really want to that no one else will want to go to because they're not the popular places to go. It's ok to just sit back and enjoy your alone time with yourself, doing things that require you to get to know yourself better. It's ok to disappear for a while and just move around without anyone questioning why you felt the need to do so. It's ok to love yourself and better yourself for the sake of your own personal happiness.

It's ok to be single and free.