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You will never be alone unless you choose to be.

I heard these words for years on end. In my mind, I was thinking, “Why would I choose to be alone? I want to have someone in my life. I want to have a significant other—someone I can confide in and talk with and be safe and share my life with.”

But yet, when opportunities came, I pushed them away or caused an issue so they wouldn’t get close. I pushed when I wanted to pull. The fact is that I didn’t nor still do I know how to love or be loved. And the fact is that I just don’t feel worthy or that I have something to offer someone at this point.

I want to be loved and I definitely know how to give love unconditionally, but receiving it is a whole different story. For years, I’ve been running—running from the past, from memories I’m not even sure of. Running from myself and people and the present and everything in between, not sure where to go or where I’m headed.

My growing-up years weren’t the greatest. Love and affection definitely were not items freely given or received. Like all parents, my parents did the best they could with what they had to offer in regard to their upbringing and knowledge, and their current situation. I believe that no individual accepts the responsibility of parenthood wanting to be a bad or absent parent. Life happens and they deal with the circumstances and the hand they are dealt with at the time.

There was a lot of struggle. I don’t share much of that as most people want to place shame or blame. Trust me, the person living that life or dealing with that memory is already carrying all the shame/blame they need. They don’t need others adding to it. They just want to be “normal”—whatever the definition.

In your quest to find a normal or happy family life (trying to recreate an image that you wanted but never had as a child), you certainly don’t have the tools or the knowledge to get there. So in your quest for love and acceptance, you try to recreate what you know the definition of love to be, which isn’t always the correct version.

If you never experienced or had something, then you don’t know what it tastes like or how it feels. You can’t miss something you never had.

You might encounter actual love, kindness, honesty, and tenderness coupled with love and affection. However, if all you have experienced or known your entire life is love based on conditions without emotion or affection, or drama, fighting, verbal and physical abuse, then if you do actually experience the good kind of love, it’s not going to be your normal—and it’s definitely not going to feel good or right based on your knowledge/experience. So, naturally, you push it away.

You almost have to relearn/retrain yourself to open your heart to what is good and acceptable. This is not who we are or who we want to be but the only way of life we know. We have to start all over with the basics to truly allow ourselves to be loved.

As a result of what we know and feel comfortable with, we tend to pick the same people, just in different bodies. The three men in my life that I lived with or married were basically the same person in a different shell. Not one of them made me feel loved or worthy or that I mattered.

Although, I have now learned that I had to love myself in order to feel that and I couldn’t find my worth in others.

However, they all had their issues and that affected me in some way, shape, or form. And the worse I was treated, the more I chased, and the more I tried to change who I was so they would love and accept me. At the time, I didn’t realize that I needed to love and accept myself first.

I believe I’m finally almost there, but at this time, I have been so hurt that I have now built an even larger wall, making it quite difficult for anyone to get in.

Please join me on my path or journey to healing and trying to open myself up to love and allow others in because I’m tired and done with “choosing to be alone.”