Filling Holes

You know that hole people talk about? The one we're all trying to fill with something we think will make us whole, happy? Some try to fill it with a significant other or sex, drugs, alcohol, work, exercise, food, religion. Religious people will try to convince you that only god can fill that hole, but that hole inside you isn't god-shaped, or food-shaped, or any other shape. Maybe I'm late to the party of understanding, but I realized today that hole is an absence of love, and the only way to fill it is with love. 

I've been desperately wondering my whole life why my family doesn't love me, why my romantic partners over the years haven't loved me, why my friends don't love me. The truth is they just don't know how, and quite frankly I'm tired of trying to earn other people's love. Nor am I interested in trying to explain to people how to love me. For the most part, I'm not even sure any one of these people is capable of loving me the way I need to be loved. The only person who can do that is me. I'm a little bit resentful about that right now, but I imagine I'll come around eventually. I'm already starting to just a little bit.

There's a lot of talk these days about self-love, but I haven't encountered very many people who seem to actually know how to do it. Apparently, it's pretty simple. You think about what you'd like other people to do to show you that they love you. Then you do those things for yourself. I'm still pretty new to taking care of myself, and this sounds like a raw deal to me. The whole point is that I want someone else to love me and take care of me. At some point, however, you have to face the truth. Well, I do, at least. No one is going to do it for me. In 39 years of life on this planet, no one has stepped up and loved me in the ways I feel loved. So it's gotta be me. It's me or nobody. I might not like it. I might hate it even. And trust me, I do. But these are my options.