Choosing Me Over 'We': The Hardest Decision I Ever Made

The world has filled my head with whirlwind love stories since the day I remember first watching Sleeping Beauty. Prince Charming finds his Princess, falls in love with her beauty, they ring the wedding bells, and off into the sunset they ride, living happily ever after. 

It’s a tale as old as time. Story after story has told us that we as women need to be beautiful, then find love, keep it, and we will be happy forever. Love will save you! It will give you the life you’ve always dreamed of! Everywhere you looked, the world presented these facts to you, and you believed this shit. Ate it up, in fact. Turned over rock after rock searching for it. Kissed every toad in hopes your Prince would appear. Thus, getting you one step closer to your wedding day and the life that you believed you needed to have in order to prove your worth and be happy. The Ultimate Cherry on top of a wonderful life.

But what is it that they don’t tell you? What happens to Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty once the credits roll, and the sun sets and he wakes up the next morning to her makeup smeared and her hair uncurled? What IS happily ever after, anyways? Does it even exist?

Enter scene: You’re walking towards the altar in a white dress, hair perfect, father by your side, everyone tearing up at how beautiful you are, flowers galore. This is every little girl’s dream! And all you can think is, “Why am I here? This is the last place I want to be. What am I getting myself into? It's no longer I do... it's I DON'T!”. 

In this instance, I’m questioning the past three years of life, how I got to this very moment, why I said yes, is this something I even REALLY wanted? I had asked, nay, BEGGED, for a ring - literally walked him into the store and showed him which one I wanted, then subtly dropped hints for the next 6 months about how and when to propose.

Did I ever stop and think once about WHY? Why did I want to be married? What would it mean? What were our shared goals? Our Commitments? Why would he be the “perfect match”? Who would it make me? How did it define who I was? Was this just the next stop on the conveyor belt that I was following along until I got dumped into my grave at the very end?

It’s terrifying to think that my whole life I was brainwashed into thinking there were steps in my life that I had to take, leading up through my “Ultimate Timeline” towards death. First, you start swimming in the dating pool, then find “the one”, get engaged, get married, then people start asking about children, and then more children… but then what? What is supposed to happen next? What about ME? What does my life really mean, and what is it that I really want out of it? Is it selfish of me to not care what anyone else thinks, or what society deems as “normal”, and to take myself off Life’s Conveyor Belt and create my own life?

What a foreign concept to this little Midwestern Girl, where everyone goes off and gets married at 18 and has a billion babies, then retires to the countryside with some cows and a few horses. What is the next chapter? What is the meaning of it all? Why does having a man in my life define me and ultimately make a difference to the life path I'm leading?

These were things I struggled with for many years - up to the day I wore my white dress and walked down the aisle. The questions from friends and family about why I couldn’t find love and get it to stick. Why was I STILL SINGLE? Was there something wrong with me?

Hell no.

I was just missing one key component. I never stopped to ask myself why I didn’t just love myself. I continually turned to the outside world for approval. For someone else to determine my own self worth. To verify I was a human, and deemed worthy enough for the universe to bless me with someone to love me. Why did it not occur to me to just love myself? To create a life that I love and to be satisfied and in awe of my journey, passions and desires that the “Ultimate Timeline” no longer matters?

So, on that fateful day, stripped of my white dress, and unwilling to continue riding the conveyor belt, I finally stopped to say to myself, “You have lost all concept of who you are… And even if no one else knows who you really are, it’s high time you stop hiding yourself from YOU and embrace yourself with open arms”. 

So I walked away... I said "I DON'T" to him.... and "I DO" to myself and the life I wanted to create just for me.

In the following weeks and months, I slowly allowed myself to ask deeper questions - “Who are you? What is it that you really want? What is it that you need and desire? What is your life's purpose, if it isn't following any prescribed timeline? How do you shape and create the life that you REALLY want to live?”

Once I started to provide meaning to myself and my life, and undo my brainwashing from long ago, I started to be able to look myself in the mirror and tell myself I loved her. I no longer continued to focus on why no one would love me, and started to provide that love back to myself. And with that, a series of life events finally started to click into place. By letting go, I was really getting everything I had ever wanted.

Every day, instead of looking outward, I search inward. How can I provide myself with the love that I deserve? How can I create for myself all the things I want and desire? How can I start showing everyone what I had hidden from the world, and start letting this glorious human being inside of me shine and show the happiness that thus radiates from that love I create within?

This story hasn’t ended yet, and I don’t believe it every will really end, even when I do ultimately hit my ultimate "end of the line" - I hope that stories like these that we all share with each other begin to shimmer and shine a light in each one of you that it touches, and continues on throughout your own journey, never dimming.

If I was your muse today, then my healing is your healing.

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