Choosing Myself

A reflection on my first Hot Girl Summer

Hey y’all! I know it’s been a while since my last update. To be transparent, it’s been kind of a doozy couple of weeks. I’ve been battling a dental crisis that was just resolved last Thursday. If you’ve ever experience dental pain, you know how unbearable it can be, and how it can make it hard to do much of anything else.

During this down time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the current status of my love life. In my very first post, I mentioned how my former partner and I chose to end our 4.5 year relationship. We’re still friendly and on good terms. It was an amicable split, with no drama or dramatic happenstance that led to us going our separate ways. It’s odd because I’ve only ever prepared myself to deal with dramatic relationship-ending circumstances. I’ve always pre-comforted myself knowing that I would be able to use anger or desire to seek revenge to help me get over a failed relationship. I never thought to prepare myself for something ending as peaceful as it started. That’s something I plan to explore and spend more time with as continue my healing journey.

Right now, I’m in an unfamiliar place of grief, where I’m grieving the relationship for what it was and allowing myself to just be sad when I need to be sad, even though sometimes it feels unjustified.

While mourning my breakup, I still had the desire to have new experiences and put myself out there. Having been newly single before the start of summer, I was determined to have my version of a hot girl summer. I’m an extremely socially anxious, self-proclaimed old lady at heart, so my version of hot girl summer was less of turning up every weekend and “being outside foreal”, and more so translated to going on dates and allowing myself to meet new people with an open mind, and an open heart.

So I did just that! I shot my shot a few times – sometimes they landed, other times they didn’t. I connect with a few people, gained a couple of friends, and blocked a nice amount

of numbers. I’ve gone on really nice dates, really just-okay ones, and really bad ones. I’ve been ghosted, and I’ve been doing some ghosting. I feel like I’ve had a healthy dose of what dating in 2022 is like, and I can honestly say – it is REALLY ghetto out here.

There’s one particular instance during my “hot girl summer” endeavors that stood out to me. I shot my shot at this person, who kindly let me know that although they're single, they're not looking to date, because he’s focusing on himself. I'll be honest, initially I was disappointed and my ego was a bit bruised, so I took the gentle decline personally. My intrusive thoughts went into overdrive. I couldn't help but to think “What’s wrong with me? Is it because I don’t look like an Instagram baddie? Was I too forward?" After taking some time to reflect, I admired the fact that he had decided that he was taking this time for himself and implemented the accompanied boundaries. Instead of choosing to let the disappointment get the best of me, I decided to let it inspire me.

I’ve reached a point where I’m ready to really focus on myself, and stick by that. I came to the realization that my initial efforts at “doing me” still somehow involved me aiming to make someone else happy, making myself palatable to others, and trying to convince others that I’m worth putting energy into. It got to a point where I was on every single dating app, managing a plethora of conversations and profiles, and swiping all the time. I was so focused on igniting my next great love story that I was missing out on precious present moments with my friends and my family. Loosing Jordan especially grounded me, and reminded me that life is too short to not be present and take advantage of the time I do have.

So here I am, with a shifted point of view. I’m choosing to make my next great love story one that’s centered on Me, Myself, and I. I’m choosing to take myself out on dates. I’m choosing get quiet and to get to know myself more. I’m choosing myself to engage in new experiences. I’m choosing to be spontaneous and to not keep myself in the box. I’m choosing to consistently compliment myself and being kind to this body. I’m choosing to gift myself with simple pleasures while also holding myself accountable. I’m choosing to really give myself grace and to allow space for my feelings. I’m choosing to vow to show up for myself on a consistent basis. I’m choosing to incorporate all the elements of my dream relationship into this new relationship with myself – so that when that new love comes around, I’m familiar with it and fully excepting of all that it has to offer.

I know that this all sounds like a grand lead up to the classic cliché “you can’t love others without loving yourself first”. The truth is, I don’t fully believe that statement alone. I don’t believe in the notion that we have to do anything to be worthy of love- I believe that we all

are innately deserving of love simply because we’re here. I even believe that one is capable of loving someone without loving themselves first. All things considered, though, I believe that one we love others the best, in the way that all parties involved deserve, when we take the time to fall in love with ourselves first.

I’m convinced that being able to understand and communicate my needs and wants effectively and choosing to actively implement those boundaries in a loving way is a gift to myself now, and also sets the groundwork for a healthy, secure relationship in the future, whenever it that time comes. I know that this isn’t a grand novel revelation- its not necessarily meant to be. This is just one of those lessons that I needed to learn through experiencing it.

So, cheers to all of the rejections, deleted numbers, and dissolved connections. Cheers to the messages left on read and the meet-ups that never came to fruition. Cheers to the lonely nights and random waves of grief and second-guessing that sometimes feels shameful to verbalize. Cheers to learning to be present. Cheers to getting comfortable in this uncharted territory. Cheers to choosing to be still, and to knowing that present delay doesn’t equate to indefinite denial. Cheers to being afraid. Cheers to trying my best.

Cheers to choosing myself. ∞