Dear Millennial...

Dear Millennial,

Trust me… you can handle one day in the year that may not be about you. I am single, so I mean… I may be bitter or whatever, but I’m really not fond of all the patronizing “love yourself” posts on social media, and all the oh so wise people, people in relationships, talking about “Valentine’s day is a day to spread love, whether or not you’re in a relationship.” I mean, I know it’s totally crazy, but I don’t feel left out or resentful towards Valentine’s day and it not being totally relevant to me, at this point in my life. 

In my opinion, being told that “self love is the best love” on Valentine’s day by another single person is fine but when it comes from a person in a relationship, I find it condescending and borderline insulting. I honestly cannot handle all the pity messages about if you’re single its OK, like being single is some sort of terminal disease. And then, there are the single ones on social media, who go off on a rant about how they are all they need and “this is how I sleep at night knowing that my ex is out there messing up some other girl’s life.” Like you don’t at all sound zen or mature or even remotely OK, you sound bitter and you are an attention seeker. I feel like the battles we all face in our private lives are enough, no need for the extra nonsense. All single people need to stop having FOMO (fear of missing out) over what they think they know about someone else’s relationship. I am not afraid to say that sometimes I get very lonely and sometimes I cannot shake the feeling that I am missing something, not being in a relationship. I honestly have no problem getting to this place on my own, so I really do not need yet another person in a relationship shoving another self-love message forced down my throat and I do not anyone relentlessly but passively trying to convince me that I have a shitty life solely because I am single. 

I mean , what is the guarantee that my life would be better if I was in a relationship? Yeah, I get lonely… but when I think, no, like really think about it, past all the superficial bullshit, I know that I am not ready to be with someone just yet. I have heard from people who are married and/or are in long-term relationships, that it is good to know without a doubt, who you are, before you commit to someone else. It’s hard enough embracing who you are when you know, and holding on to that in a relationship can prove a little more difficult. Thus, it is a recipe for disaster, choosing to enter into a relationship, uncertain and unsure of who you are. You are the most vulnerable and the most impressionable when you are uncertain. Not knowing who you are will mean that you will have an even more difficult time setting boundaries and recognizing when you are losing yourself. When you are uncertain of who you are, you don’t notice when you are letting go of what is fundamentally essential to your character and when you are making yourself small to fit the needs of your partner until you wake up one day and you have no idea who the person staring back at you in the mirror is.

That being said... for most of my adult life, I have been single, it is what I know and it is what it is, so the only type of love outside of family and friends that I have any sort of experience with is self-love, so that is what I am going to talk about. And well… what’s different about this one is that I am going to speak honestly about my experiences and hope that you can relate to at least some of it. No backhanded comments and no bullshit. I think this is useful because I have learnt that it is important to sort out your relationship with yourself and your friends and your family before you get into any sort of romantic relationship, you know? (not because you have to have a good relationship with everyone but because it is good to know where you are and it is good practise for a romantic relationship, setting boundaries and all) 

Build a tribe, a solid support system, so that when you do get into a relationship, you are not solely dependent on your partner for emotional support and stability. I mean, a blind man can see how that would be unhealthy and easily result in emotional abuse. The most common thread in domestic violence cases is that the oppressor isolates the victim from their emotional and financial support systems early on in the abusive relationship, so that the victim feels trapped and keeps going back because they know and they have nothing else. The number one reason why domestic violence survivors go back to their abusers is because they have no sort of financial backbone and so they feel helpless and dependent on their abusers for survival. 

So, here it goes… I figure I should use myself as an example because this is who I know best. Loving who you are is a no-brainer and really quite easy when you feel confident and you are doing well but it is most important in those moments when its feels impossible and you absolutely cannot love who you are. In terms of self-love and self-acceptance, the thing I have struggled with the most is my weight. I mean, I have good days and bad days but whenever I feel like I have had a good couple of days, weeks even, someone makes a sly comment and we are back to square one. I have been in Nigeria for last couple of months and if you know anything about Nigerians, you know that we are as subtle as a steak knife. So, no… I have not been feeling great but now instead of wallowing in self-pity, I have chosen to take back my control and stop letting what people say have such an effect on me. I have decided to get out more often because I find that I sink into depressive thoughts when I am on my own in bed, sans wi-fi and literally doing nothing. I have also decided to make a conscious effort to write my feelings down, so that I don’t bottle them up and just explode out of the blue… Lord knows, I’ve been there and done that. Easier said than done, but at least I know I am moving in right direction. In addition to my chicken wings and muffin top, I have also acquired a healthy amount of acne over the last couple of months, which I know… these all sound like first-world problems but I am going to continue to be honest because I know that honesty does not always mean you can relate but it does make me a little less phony so I’ll take it. So, yeah I feel like every single pimple I have ever popped has risen from the dead and come back to haunt me. It is like “ghosts of pimples past” on my face right now and I have probably made it worse with all the worrying I have done. And again, every time I go out without makeup on, someone makes it a point to ask what am I doing about it because you know, MY acne situation is sooooo stressful for THEM. However, I have chosen to do everything I can to distract myself  and drink as much water as possible because water apparently solves everything.

I find it quite difficult to see myself, much less love myself when I fail or make a bad decision. When I fail or make a bad decision, I almost always revert to losing it and the standard “I fail because I’m chronically dumb and I make bad decisions because I am not good at anything” downward spiral. Any sort of attempt to come out from under the fire and recover makes me feel like I am trying to transfer blame or shy away from the part I played. I never think about the fact that failing and making bad decisions require courage and thought and effort, which is what I would like to do moving forward. I never stop for a second to think about the fact that the level of guilt and disappointment I feel is totally unrelated to how much of an adult I am or how to fix the situation, so at best... it is a waste of time. I am human so obviously I feel bad when things don't go my way, but what is futile is to extend this period to a point where I can't understanding how failing does not make me a failure. I honestly think that sometimes I fail because I get confused and immediately doubt sets and I never recover. So now, whenever I feel the slightest bit confused, I panic, which does nothing for my acne but I am so terrified that being confused means failure, which makes things a little foggy in my mind and it suddenly becomes quite difficult to see how I am just making everything worse.

However, over the last couple of months, I have had the opportunity to speak to a few wise people who have almost unanimously told me that being confused and getting to what feels like rock bottom, while utterly terrifying can also mean that inspiration, the most beautiful thing, is just around the corner. Thus, I am now in the process of reconditioning my mind to accept that a significant part of embracing growth and your journey and trusting your dopeness and the timing of your life, is learning to embrace it when one feels confused. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word “confused” as lacking in order. So many times, because we feel confused, we also assume that it is because we are stupid and we have nothing to offer. Lacking in order can lead to blocked access to whatever it is that you need, for example, having a messy room can make it quite difficult to find your cute mustard crop top that you absolutely have to wear to the house party tonight. However, the fact that you can’t see the top does in no way, shape or form mean that the top isn’t in your room. In fact, you know that the top is in your room, so it is just down to tidying it up and you are almost certain it will show up. You don’t take one look at the mess and decide that the mustard top has to be somewhere else. You may take the easier route and decide to wear something else because you feel like you don’t have enough time, but you know very well that the mustard top is somewhere in your room. Unfortunately, we often fail to do this in our minds, when it is more difficult than usual to form a coherent thought or use the resources that you have, it is probably down to taking time to de-clutter your mind. But instead when an answer is taking a little too long to show up, we begin to doubt our minds and our abilities and assume that it is because we have nothing to offer or we maybe don’t know how to use our brain and our resources, that’s why we are here. Either way, it always somehow becomes your fault, which does nothing for your confidence.

Being confused can often make you feel stranded and suffocated and like you have no options, but in fact, it is quite literally, the opposite. We get confused because we are indecisive, because we have no faith, because we have no perseverance, because we do not trust our own intuition and because we are so terrified by failure, that we freeze and do nothing at all… I mean, that’s one way to do it. Not finding the mustard top the first time, does not mean that it isn’t there, so what if it takes a couple more tries? We are so good at convincing ourselves that we are confused and we do not have the answers we need, but the fact is, we are just entitled cowards, and we fear that what we want is so far out of our comfort zones that failure seems imminent. So, it makes sense to pout and bask in our “loneliness” and what we think we may or may not be missing in a relationship, because it is much easier to feel the pain or try to bury the pain of loneliness that is self-inflicted than to face whatever or whoever it is that terrifies us and have no agency over the pain and where it comes from. So, we conveniently talk about “self-love” and what not, to give off the illusion that we are mature and well aware of ourselves while actually doing nothing to get to know who we really are. We are so focused on feeding our present selves that we become totally oblivious to the great disservice we are doing to our future selves. 

We have become or slowly become so incredibly self-involved and narcissistic and so relentless in our avoidance of life and change that we are left with no time to much of anything else. And you know what’s worse? We often don’t even notice, so we could be doing this over and over and over again for years and years, only to blame a new thing or person every time shit hits the fan. So, honestly… Isn’t it  much easier to just give in? and do whatever it is that terrifies us because what’s the worst that could happen? What? failure? well… you’ll be OK, trust me.