Author: Meaghan Porter

I'm a girl with an odd sense of humor.  I can be dry and sarcastic, with dark undertones and it usually takes a certain kind of person to get my jokes.  I'll also go for a laugh at the expense of others, all in good fun of course, with myself not being excluded from that. 

Lately however, it seems that if you dare make a disparaging remark about yourself, even in jest, you are scorned and laid into without abandon.  Which in my humble opinion, is just plain stupid.

Let's get one thing straight, body positivity and loving yourself, warts and all, is definitely a must.

As someone that has suffered from low self-esteem to the extreme, I am proud of the fact that I am fairly secure in who I am as a person.  Both physically and personality wise.  It has taken years for me to gain the self-confidence I do have, even if it waivers from time to time.

But that doesn't mean I'm blind to my imperfections.  Nobody is perfect, that's the way it is.  I'm realistic and I know what I need to work on, what I'm content with, and all the little bits in-between.

So if I make a joke about the fact that my tummy looks like I'm five months pregnant after eating just a bit too much at Chipotle, or that my thighs are the reasons it's thundering so loudly outside, it's okay to fucking laugh.  Because you see the thing is, I have a relationship with myself much the way I have relationships in my everyday life:

If I pick on you, I like you.

Therefore, if I'm picking on that little bit of tubbiness that is present on my rear end or the bat wings I have on my arm, it is only because I love myself enough, and am confident enough, to make fun of myself and my imperfections. 

I don't need you to tell me that I'm being silly, or that there is nothing wrong with me.  I'm not fishing for compliments, so you don't need to tell me how beautiful I am.  Reserve that for the times that I spent three hours making my hair and makeup perfect and spent $200 on a new dress.

I am, however, fishing for a laugh, so if I make a joke (and it's funny, which let's be honest here, most of my jokes totally are), fucking laugh at it.  And then be prepared for me to more than likely make fun of the weird way you laugh or the crazy way your hair sticks up in the back.

Being able to make fun of yourself and tease yourself isn't a sign of low self-esteem or that I need reassurance.  On the contrary, it shows that I am a healthy, well-rounded woman, who is confident enough in her own skin and self-worth that I can tease about the trivial things.  I've earned that right, I fought hard for it.  So you can be damn sure I'm going to enjoy it.

It was almost impossible to be around you after we'd broken up. It was painful to see you moving on, knowing that I still had such intense feelings of love for you burning inside my chest. All the while I was making my own pathetic and futile attempts to move on.

I can't even begin to tell you how many times I nearly called it quits.

But time moved forward and I moved on too. I got over you. I found someone new in my life, and our friendship blossomed. It wasn’t an easy transition but I was thrilled to seemingly now have it all. 

The great guy who didn't work as my boyfriend became a wonderful friend, and I had an amazing new boyfriend.

Then my world crashed down again. Before I even knew what had happened, that amazing new guy broke my heart and left me in pieces on the floor. 

But what hurt the most about it all, wasn't that he had broken up with me. It was that one minute he had cared about how I felt, and just like that, he didn't. He destroyed me, and didn't even stay around for a fraction of a second to survey the damage he had done. 

It was in that moment I had a new, resounding respect for you and the friendship we now had.  All while we were making our attempts to form a friendship from our broken relationship, I only ever thought about how hard it was for me. 

I never once gave thought to how you might have felt during it all.

Because you stayed.

I never sugar coated anything with you or hid how much I was hurting after we had broken up.  You witnessed me crying countless times, you heard me speak of how much I hurt, and you took the insults silently when I voiced to you what you had done wrong in our relationship.  

None of that could have been easy for you. 

To feel as if you were the reason for someone else's pain. To watch them struggle to rebuild themselves, and feeling as if you were responsible. To be told that you were. It would have been so much easier for you to just walk away from me completely. But for some reason you didn't.

Yes, you broke my heart, but you also stayed around after that to help put the pieces back together. You supported me, you held my hand when I needed it, and you offered me advice and encouragement without judgement.  

And when my heart was broken again, you were the one whose arms held me as I cried over it.  You were the one I was able to talk to about the pain, and you were the one who put his own issues and feelings aside to try to make me smile and brighten my days.

I took you and our friendship for granted, because I hadn't understood the efforts it must have taken you to get to the place we were now at.  Now that I have a better idea of what all that really entailed, all I want to do is say thank you.

Thank you, a hundred times thank you.  For being the one who stayed through it all.  For being one of the best men and friends I could ever have hoped to find.

Why are there so many self-imposed rules about love?  Hundreds upon hundreds of articles, from how fast you can fall in love with someone to the right and wrong way of professing your love. 

We take all these opinions and “rules??? into account and let it govern the very thing that itself has no rules and knows no limits. We question our hearts and ourselves constantly when it comes to love, completely forgetting what love truly is.

Love is a gift. Plain and simple.

Whether you are the giver or the receiver doesn’t matter. From an early age, we are taught to give for the sole purpose of giving, not out of expecting anything in return. So why then, do we treat love any differently?

I was in a relationship where I felt the need to bite my tongue for three and a half years. Three and a half years of wanting to tell the man that I was with “I love you??? out loud, and never once doing so.

Why?

Because he hadn’t said it to me. I felt it, I constantly battled the urge to tell him, and I said nothing. All because he hadn’t said it to me yet, and for some reason, I thought that meant I couldn’t say it to him.

I essentially hid a part of who I was for over three years, and at the end of the day, all I felt was pain over the walls I built around myself.

The fear of loving someone and them not loving you back is very much real, I understand that.  As is our nature to second guess our feelings for others.  Especially when those feelings come on incredibly strong and fast. 

Whether they love you back, however, doesn’t matter.  Whether it took you only a month to fall in love with the person, or it took you a year, it’s all inconsequential. 

I am utterly terrified of love and all that it means. The unrequited love, the pain, the heartbreak. Allowing yourself to be open and vulnerable to someone, knowing full well that they have the power to hurt you if you allow yourself to nestle them into your heart. 

Those things won’t change the fact you love them, though. So why try to pretend that you don’t feel what you do?

One of the greatest gifts you can give someone is your love, and telling them that you love them is an extension of that. It shouldn’t be said because you want to hear it said back to you, or because you need some kind of validation yourself.

You should say it when you feel it, when you mean it, and whenever you damn well feel ready to.  Without expectation or terms attached.

It might sound cliché, but you never know what tomorrow will hold and what chances you will get. Do you want to live your entire life, wondering if someone knew how you felt about them? That even if it didn’t last, or wasn’t meant for forever, that you held them in your heart and really, absolutely loved them?

I am a creature of words. They uplift me, inspire me, and make me feel whole. I want nothing more than to be told I am loved and feel that amazing, warm glow pulsating through my veins. 

I won’t let that desire control me, though. I won’t let the overwhelming waves of emotion relentlessly crash against my chest while I try to keep it contained until I’m given my longing first.

If I love someone, I will tell them. Often and without reservation.

My mother, my grandparents, my son, my best friend, my boyfriend; none are exempt.

I will never tell someone I love them if I don’t mean it.  In my life, I have said it to my family, a few close friends, and three romantic partners.  I make sure I genuinely feel love, not some charade of it, before expressing it to those who have gained it.

Still, my love isn’t finite, there is no need for me to contain it as if it were.  If the people I love also love me in return, then that is pure magic.  If not, that is perfectly acceptable too.  Because I love them for who they are, and my love does not lose or gain value by the absence of their love for me.

When I tell you that I love you, it’s because I do.  No ulterior motives, no tricks, nothing needed back.  It’s because I want you to know and never have to question how much I care about you.  It’s because you’ve touched my heart in a such a way, that I want to give you the greatest gift I have to give.

My love.

You opened the car door for me, and as I got inside, you said you had changed your mind and now never wanted marriage.  And if that was something I was hoping for with you, well then…

I cut you off.  I was trying so hard not to let my shock of what just came from your lips to show; to not stumble on my words.  I made some sort of lighthearted joke, and then spent the rest of my afternoon with you forcing a smile on my face while deep inside my heart was breaking.

I felt stupid.  Heartbroken.  Angry.  Disrespected.  You knew full well that what I want more than anything is to one day be married to someone I absolutely love.  We had talked about it more than once.  

I knew you were hesitant at the idea of ever getting married again, but had no idea you had made up your mind so finitely about it.  I thought when you had, you'd sit me down and have an honest, open, and caring conversation about it.

I deserved that much from you.

Instead I got to have my hopes crushed in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, with you saying it about as casually as you would mention that you just purchased a new pair of shoes.

What made it worse were that these were hopes I didn't even have before you.  They were hopes that you built up within me, hopes that you flat out gave me.  I wasn't crazy, I hadn't fallen for someone that wasn't on the same page as me.

You had been, once.  But you decided to slam the book shut completely, before ever getting to the end of the story.  You decided to end our story before it even began, and for that, I'm angry.

I'm absolutely infuriated over the fact that even though I have been through hell and hurt before, I was willing to take a leap of faith for you, but you won't do the same for me.  

You were feeling things, real things for me, and then you just turned it off.  Like some kind of switch.  I don't know why or how, but you chose not to let yourself fall for me.  You made the conscious decision to close yourself off to me and what we could be.

It wasn't as if I was expecting to marry you, have children, and live happily ever after tomorrow.  Hell, not even next month or next year.  But knowing that I was opening my badly damaged heart, which I was beyond reluctant to do, to someone where that future was a possibility, was what I needed.

Yet, in one sweeping motion, you threw those cards off the table and undermined everything I thought I was potentially building with you.  You made me feel disregarded and like the ultimate fool.  Utterly and completely stupid for thinking that maybe it was possible to have my happy ending.

I've done everything right.  You constantly tell me how good I am to you and that you're happy with me.  So then why have you put a wall around your heart, and have refused to let me in?  I can accept uncertainty, I can accept needing time; I'm patient and willing to prove that I won't hurt you.

But what's the point if you've shut that door to us, and thrown away the key?  I love being with you, I adore spending time with you, and I don't want it to end.  But that's the problem, isn't it?

The more I am with you, the more I want you, the more my feelings infiltrate every fiber of my being and begin to solidify and become a part of who I am.  

I'm hoping to be your rock, your foundation, when in reality all I might be is a stepping stone.  A place holder until something better comes along.

Your actions and words have hurt me deeper than I've ever experienced.  The barrier you've put up between us in tangible.  Still, the last thing I want to do is let you go.

And here I stand on this precipice of hope and despair, wondering which way I should sway.  I don't want to be someone's way of passing time.  If there's no future for us, than so be it.  

But I really think there could be, if you'd only give it a real chance.

I love you.  Please, let me.  Let me love you.

Okay sure, boyfriends are great for certain things.  Getting things from really high places, helping change out a tire (because changing a tire in heels is hard guys!), and awesome sex.  

But at the end of the day, they can be a bit of a headache too.  So why not skip the pain, and go straight to the local rescue for the best friend you could ever ask for: a dog!

1.  Dogs don't leave the toilet seat up.

I mean, you have to train them not to pee and poop all over the house.  But once you put in a solid 4-6 weeks of potty training, you'll never have to worry about that again.  When was the last time you were able to train a man anything?

2.  They are always, without fail, happy to see you.

Most men won't admit it, but they are just as PMSy as us chicks are.  There are days that no matter what you do, they just aren't happy.  Dogs aren't like that.  You just show up and suddenly you're a goddess, and a dog is your loyal worshiper.  Instant ego boost.

3.  They love to snuggle.

Not all dogs, but most dogs, absolutely love a good cuddle session.  They will literally lay on your lap or next to you on the couch for hours and just let you hug on them.  How could anyone ever feel alone when they have that?

4.  In the same regard, if you're not feeling it, just tell them to go lay down in their own bed.

If you're over the snuggles, just put your little buddy down on the floor and tell them to find someplace else to nap.  Doing the same to your boyfriend will result in dirty looks and questions about your sanity.

5.  Substantially cheaper dinner dates.

A forty pound bag of kibble costs about $50, and will last your pup about two weeks to a month, depending on the size of your dog.  I don't know about you, but not once in my life was I able to spend fifty smackers on a dinner that lasted my date more than a night or two of leftovers.

6.  You'll always have a partner in crime.

Want to go hiking?  A road trip up the coast?  Just a simple walk around the park?  You'll always have a willing and eager buddy to be right by your side.  No more flying solo for you!

7.  Their loyalty is second to none.

In a day and age where there aren't many women who can say that they've never been cheated on, it's a refreshing change of pace to find some real loyalty.  Okay, it's coming from a slobbery, furry, four-legged creature who drinks from the toilet.  But he's so adorable, so it's totally okay.

At the end of the day, boyfriend's might come and go.  Your loyal and loving new best friend will stick with you through thick and thin, though.  

Just remember, dogs are a lifetime commitment, not something to get when you think they're cute, and toss aside when you're over it.  But if you have the love and commitment to make to a new furry pal, he'll pay you back tenfold.

I’ve never lied about being broken.  I’ve tried to conceal just how deep the damage is at times, but that’s just because I’m scared.

I’m terrified of scaring people away.  That they will see the extent of my emotional decay and go running to the hills.

They will think that I’m a lost cause or that it would take too much to repair the years of damage that was wrought upon me.

So what I need known, is that I don’t need nor want anyone to fix me.  Only I can do that, one day at a time.

What I need is someone that understands that and will support me through my own spiritual renovation.

If I lay my head on your shoulder, and then quickly pull it away again, bring me back again and hold me close.

I’m not used to being allowed to show I care in physical ways, and I need the practice.

If I’m clearly upset but I tell you “I’m fine,” remind me that you’re there for me if I need to talk.

Years were spent with me burying my feelings, out of fear of angering someone with them.  Sometimes I need the reassurance that it’s okay for me to open up.

The days where I’m absolutely sure I look terrible, don’t tell me I’m being stupid or even that I’m beautiful. 

Let me know that it’s okay to feel that way sometimes, but it’s far from true.

And on the days I push you away and tell you that I need to be alone, be there for me anyway.

Show up at my door with a hug, call to talk to me, or even send an email letting me know you’re thinking of me.

I’m a work in progress, and I’m relearning who I am day by day.  I’m building up strength within myself that I had thought was long lost.

These are things that only I can do.  But that doesn’t mean I want to do them alone.

I want you to see my transformation.  To see how truly incredible I can be. 

Because I know she’s in there, and she’s really going to amaze you.  I promise.

I'm okay with being alone.  I like being with someone, don't get me wrong.  Having someone to cuddle with, go out to places with, have amazing sex with; all things I wholeheartedly enjoy.

Yet, I have learned that I don't need anyone in my life to be happy.

I used to be the girl that pinned all my happiness on my partner.  I couldn't see beyond our relationship and thought the end of it meant the end of myself as a person.

I realized how wrong I was after a few months of being by myself.

There's an emotional freedom to being single.  My overthinking brain doesn't have to analyze every text or tone, wondering if it holds some other hidden meaning.  I don't feel insecure that my feelings aren't being reciprocated by someone.  No one but me is in charge of my happiness.

I definitely don't need you in my life, but I certainly want you in it.

However, I love myself enough to know that I shouldn't accept anything less than what I deserve out of a relationship.  I want you, but I want you to want me too.

I'm not about wasting mine or anyone else's time;  I know who I am and what I want.  If you don't, that's fine.  Just have the courage to tell me.

If you don't want me in your life the way that I want you, just be honest with me.  It'll hurt, I'm not going to lie.  It'll hurt because I see the potential in what we could be, and will think you're making a big mistake in letting me go.

But that's your mistake to make.  I can't take it away from you or try to convince you otherwise.

Nor will I try to.  I spent too long in the past trying to convince someone of how amazing I was.  I won't do it again; it should be utterly obvious.  

There's nothing in this world that could compare to what I have to offer someone.  For the first time in my life, I'm confident in that fact and it won't be shaken.

'So if you're gonna leave, you better get going.  'Cause I ain't wasting no more time on what we did, and what we didn't.  So if you're gonna leave, yeah you better start running.  'Cause I ain't wasting no more time, on what might have been.'  Emerson Hart – If You're Gonna Leave

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I have this horrible habit.  It's one that I've tried to break countless times, but my insecurities always seem to get the better of me and it happens again.

Things are going great, I'm happy and feel over the moon.  Then one little thing is said or done that makes me question everything.  I feel vulnerable and scared.  

I get upset and pick an argument over something, usually completely unrelated to what made me scared in the first place.

How frustrating it must be for you, I do realize that.  But please know, that when I push you away, that's when I desperately need you to pull me closer to you.

I know it's not fair.

I spent years being made to feel like my feelings were invalid.  I wasn't allowed to tell anyone what was wrong or what had bothered me, and I learned to shut down when those feelings emerged.  

Self preservation made me learn that I needed to pull away, because it didn't matter that it felt like I was dangling over a precipice, with no one to catch me if I fell.

When I'm driving you absolutely crazy and you're wondering what the hell I am even talking about, that's when I need you to be there for me.  

Please, don't let me fall into the black hole of insecurities and overwhelming emotions.

I don't mean to put you through a test, that's not my intention at all.  Deep down inside I know that you care about me and that you're there for me.  

But that little voice inside my head sometimes supersedes my logical brain, and the pain of the past roars its ugly head, telling me I'm not good enough.

So I pull away.  I do and say things that make no sense to you, and annoy you.  I hope against hope that you see past the curtain, and when you don't, I feel ever more so that you don't care and that I'm not worthy of the extra effort that it takes to be with me.  

I want you to make me feel safe.  I want you to see past the bullshit, tell me that I'm being silly and that I should stop, because you care about me.  

I want you to call me even when you think I don't want to talk, and let me know that you're still thinking about me.  I need you to let me know that you're there.

I promise that I'll get better, and as I begin to feel safer with you, these moments will become less and less until I simply don't question things anymore.  

But until then, please, be patient with me.  There are still things inside of me that are broken, and I know if anyone understands that at the end of the day it is you.

All of it is worth it, it really is.  Even broken and frustrating, I am one hell of a woman that has so much to give.  

If you show me love and kindness, even what it's hard to do so, I will pay you back in ways you never thought possible.  I will move mountains for you when I regain my footing on that ledge of fear.  

I will also give you back everything you've given me.  

When it's your turn to enter that dark recess within your own mind, I'll be there to hold your hand and help lead you out.  I'll shine the light that let's you know that you're not alone;  I'm there and I care.