I remember sitting in class in high school doodling on a piece of paper his initials plus mine and equating it to a forever wholeness. I remember practicing my signature with the last name of my secret crush and assuming that identity was pure happiness. I remember writing poems about that moment my heart would skip a beat when I first saw someone walk into the room after an absence, almost as if I was missing half of myself with the person being away. The same behavior matured and continued into college, into grad school, and in some form or another still exists today. It’s amazing that I was able to get passing grades because I treated nearly every class like it was “Introduction to the Concept of Being Loved.”

For the longest time, I thought that this love would come from an external source, and that’s where I searched for it. I constantly put myself out there too much, hoping that my continued efforts at “being a good person” would eventually pay off with an all-encompassing, over the moon, make other people sick kind of love that only existed in the movies and in my life. To some extent, I thought I found this love a few different times as I was growing up. Looking back, I realized what I defined as “love” was really a one-sided relationship where I settled into giving everything I had and receiving very little of what I wanted in return. Eventually, “being loved” felt very similar to what I imagine the bottom of a shoe feels like as one aggressively scrapes it along concrete or a doormat trying to peel away all the crap that it got dragged through all day. And still, I didn’t realize what I was doing wrong. I didn’t realize that this poor fate was my own fault. I viewed the world as something that was just happening to me, and I was the proverbial “nice guy” in the epic “Night Guy Finishes Last” series.

Until one day, the director had enough, screamed cut, and in walked a brilliant new role in my life. This new story line was genius. Centered around the concept of having the ultimate power, the series name was officially changed to “Just Love Yourself, duh.” This is when I realized what I had been doing wrong all along. I wasn’t loving myself, but instead expecting someone else to do it for me.

Socially speaking, we train the people around us how to treat us by the expectations we have of them and how we handle it when they don’t meet our expectations. The same is true of love. Sure, the people around us- good friends, family- will always tend to see the best in us and therefore love things about us even if we disagree. But, how satisfying is that, really? In my opinion, we each have a huge responsibility in not only showing people what to love about us, but also training them how to. In order to do this, we need to know how we want to be loved. We need to know what makes us feel good, what makes us feel bad, what satisfies us, what we need in a partner, what we want in a partner, what our tendencies are when things get hard, how we act when we are vulnerable, how we let people in, when we tend to push people away, etc. We need to know what qualities we have that make us worth loving, i.e. what is it about us that should make someone feel that all-encompassing, over the moon, make other people sick kind of love for us? In order to figure these things out, we have to love ourselves first.

Learning to love yourself first allows you to stop waiting for that magical day when someone else finally makes you “feel loved.” You get to stop searching for someone to complete you, to fix you, or to convince you that you’re worth something. Instead, you begin looking for someone who is going to enhance the love you already feel, someone who is going to expand on how great your world already is, a person who will share in this awesome adventure of life, who will teach you new things, push you to be your best, support you in what you know you want for yourself, someone who will hold you to your own expectations and who will have their own expectations of you. Because after all, you’re going to want that person to know how to train you to love him/her, too.

So, let’s change what the doodles in class look like. Let’s change what the poems are about. For we no longer need to settle for our half of a heart meeting another half of a heart resulting in a full heart. No way! I want something more. I want my own fully completed heart to collide into another fully completed heart to create the biggest, most amazing love there can be. I want to write about the adventures that love takes me on. I want to feel SO LOVED because not only have I learned to love myself, but I’ve also taught this person how to love me in the best way possible. And because I’m not expecting things that are actually my own responsibility, we can just love each other and swim in happiness.

Because here’s what it comes down to: if YOU don’t love you, then who will? Who will be able to figure out all that is amazing about you if you don’t believe anything amazing exists? Who will learn how to make you feel your best, how to handle you at your worst, how to support you, encourage you, push you to reach your dreams, if you have no idea how to do those things yourself? Who will know what you need if you don’t know what you need? Who will know what you want if you don’t know what you want? We can’t possibly create that necessary expectation of people in our lives if we don’t have that expectation of ourselves.

Loving yourself isn’t always easy. It’s a commitment just like anything else, and it takes work. You will have good days and bad days, but it’s all worth it if it leads you to the life you want. Strive to achieve this transformation everyday and maybe, just maybe, we will be able to influence a new generation who will spend endless class periods doodling about how happy they are all on their own.