Overview

Man in the mirror is a story about how the society has programmed us to conform to standards that have forced us to be inauthentic in a bid to try and be what others deem is right. We often tend to seek so much validation from people who are sometimes not even valid, a good example is business trends, We look to the market trends to know if we can compete and this is also applied to all other aspects of life. Today however, I want to assure you that you are authentic and even if you fail every once in a while always remember it's a bad day not a bad life.

Its funny how we are taught so many things in life but no one actually teaches us how to love ourselves and why it is so important. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately and I have realized that it is the cause of most failed relationships, but more often than not we were broken way before we got heart broken by a girl or a boy we dated at any point. I guess this is the point where I give a personal story that brings out the context of what I’m talking about. So here goes, you’ve probably read my other stories and know where my heart is at, I have always been someone who is pretty much in touch with my emotions and many are the times I try to pretend that I am not really an emotional person but in all honesty it’s just a front I put up to push people away especially because of all the terrible past experiences. Our parents do their best at teaching us what to expect out here but they obviously can’t anticipate everything that is going to happen so somethings we actually learn along the way. So I joined campus ecstatic as everyone else probably gets, anticipating all that freedom and all the things we hear about post high school life. The basic cliché, I met a guy who I fell head over heels in love with, or at least I thought I was for what I understood love to be at that point, he was a great guy and we had really great times together but it ended  suddenly and I was left devastated because I had gotten so used to the routine and always having someone to tell how my day was and all those sweet nothings, I didn’t realize at that point but I had gotten super attached the 2 years we had been together that I had lost my sense of individuality, I didn’t know who I was really outside of the relationship, I just knew what we liked to do as a couple but I had no clue what I liked or loved doing by myself. So you can imagine how hard it was to pick up the pieces after the end of the relationship, for a few weeks I sulked and cried and listened to Taylor Swift songs and convinced myself that he was not worth it and all the bullshit we tell ourselves to feel better. A month later I felt like I had gotten over it and was ready to dive back into the market because I hadn’t really ever been single and it felt strange and boring to me, so I met someone new who was saying all the right things and being super vulnerable at the time I could say I was pretty much gullible and wanted to develop a connection and feel the warmth and approval of someone else because I was so used to that, so we ended up dating. Anyway long story short if I knew then what I know now I would have taken a little longer before jumping back to the market, which is actually the reason I thought about writing this story and putting it out there in case it gets to someone who might need it right now. I couldn’t accept at that time that I had some toxic traits and I wasn’t ready to be with another person but I needed to feel loved by anyone who was willing to love me so when this new guy came saying all these nice things I fell for it, even though I saw the red flags, I needed to feel loved again and I needed the validation so much that I gladly put on rose colored glasses and put him up on a pedestal because to me he was art, he was a semblance of love to me. This is the reality of many people both men and women. I didn’t realize that at that point I had already drawn a picture in my head of how I expected the relationship to be and look like, I could say I fell in love with the person I had drawn him to be which really he didn’t have to be, that was just my toxic traits getting the better of me because maybe I wanted what I thought I had had before in the previous relationship plus a little more for clout purposes because I wanted my friends and other people to see how I had bounced back. Looking back at it now I don’t really regret it because the relationship was full of so many ups and downs and it had a major impact on the woman that I am today and we shouldn’t really hate experiences, both good and bad, that have shaped us to be the people that we are or the people we are becoming. Anyway it didn’t work out between that guy and me but I had learnt very important life lessons by the end, this time I didn’t rush to heal and dive back into the market. I decided to take it slow, and this is when reality hit me that I had never really taken time to get to know myself. I didn’t want to rush in but the pressure of being alone was really getting to me especially seeing my friends in happy relationships, but I decided to thug it out. I was hell bent on discovering who I was outside of another individual, I went on shopping sprees, made new friends, ate out, went swimming and basically many outdoor activities. I found a friend in myself, I started realizing I could actually have fun alone, going for coffee dates alone and such things and it made me realize that we often want someone to love us in a way that we should actually love ourselves because we are the people who will set the pace for others and show them how to love us and this is something I feel like many people need to hear. We put so many expectations on people on how to love us when we can’t even love ourselves in that same way. And that is where the challenge begins, so many years of education but no one ever taught us how to love ourselves and how important is. Cases of suicide have been on the rise and we still haven’t put any emphasis on how loving ourselves is really important because we only kill or destroy parts of ourselves that we hate or can’t deal with, imagine the kind of pain or how much love one must have lacked for themselves that they decide to end their lives. Self-love is not easy and I don’t have any formulas on how to achieve that but I feel like if we give ourselves time and take it a day at a time we can get there, it is not always easy but it is important that we celebrate ourselves and clap for ourselves every step of the way even when we don’t win we have to acknowledge that we aren’t where we began and that in its own respect is a win. I feel like we will go a long way in understanding love if we understand how to love ourselves,so you ask me what my one wish would be it would definitely be a more wholesome world where self love is a priority to all people both young and old because often our concept about ourselves are weak and inauthentic because we have been programmed to believe that we have to fit into social norms which in turn put so much pressure on us if we do not conform,but I wanna tell you for free today that ýou have more ppwer over your physical well being and your impact in life than you give yourself credit for and therefore to transform what you see on the outside you have to transform who you are on the inside.I’m starting with the woman in the mirror, how about you?

WRITER: Marie