When Love Says Yes

Before now I had told myself that writing anything about love is pointless, and that it does nothing to make you feel better. In fact, I was of the opinion that writing about love, especially in its favor is a sign of weakness, and I personally do not like coming off as weak (Yea Yea). Anyway, I think I am ready to say my bit on love and what it does. Indulge me a bit as I try to express myself on this rather intricate issue.

First off, in case you were wondering, I am female, and love has shown me shege; yes, I said shege because that is the only way I can describe what I have been through all because I thought I was in love with one or two people in the past. After approximately two years and a few months of being out of love and abhorring everything that has to do with the latter, I have discovered that I had all this while had the wrong idea about what love really is. I had ample time to ask myself salient questions, ‘Do I love myself? Have my actions in the past depicted the love I should have had for myself? Did I love people in return for love? Well, after asking and asking, I realized, and only recently so, that I actually had been living without loving myself. I might come off as a little selfish, but the truth is nothing beats self-love. In the quest to find that perfect person who would love you for you, you need to be able to love you for you. Nemo dat quod non habet, you cannot give what you do not have; all the while you felt you were loving someone and doing all that you thought you could to please them, and were crying when they did nothing in return, you were doing it wrong. You had not loved yourself first, and as such you were not giving what you needed to give in order to receive what you should.

Personally, I learned to love myself by watching myself grow, I decided to embrace the changes I began to notice about myself, I tried not to spend time chiding myself for the mistakes I had made, and instead focused on embracing them and accepting them as a phase that was necessary in my life. There was a time in my life when I had a list of things I swore I would not do, I would always tell anyone who cared to listen that I so and so, and as such I would not be caught dead doing so and so for any reason, then when for some reason I found myself doing so and so, I would weep profusely because I felt I have wronged myself and fallen from that high place I had put myself. Do not get me wrong, this has nothing to do with having standards, you can have standards and keep to them, but the truth is you cannot fully control what you can do and when you can do them.

You have to love yourself enough to be able to let yourself go and live without inhibitions. Do you know that it is the things you hammer on, the ones you constantly rebuke and say “over my dead body would I do this”, that you end up doing? Most people vow to never be like a certain parent, and later on find themselves slowly morphing into that particular parent. It is better to let yourself grow, to watch yourself make mistakes, learn the right lessons from them, and forge ahead. The moment you start to let yourself go and appreciate yourself, the easier it would be to accept other people for who they are, and the easier it is to find love, and be loved in return.

I need to add that when you do find what seems like love, you might not really recognize it, because you have loved yourself and are comfortable being you, it would seem so natural, you would probably mistake it for a good friendship. Do not be in a haste to put tags on such a relationship, do not be in a haste to want to define it, just let it grow the same way you let yourself grow. Slowly you find yourself saying yes to love when all along you have been saying no vehemently. Are you in love with yourself? Has your self-love brought others to believe in loving you? How do you show yourself you love you? Tell me!

 

Written by Olamide Dasilva

@DasilvaDiva1

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