Committed*
I’ve been single for the overwhelming majority of my adult life. I’ve spent countless hours dating, crying, raging, planning, analyzing, venting, beautifying, drinking and trying to fuck my way out of this status. It never worked
Our society celebrates the couples and others the singles. It’s rare for me to meet a new person and not have one of their initial queries involve my relationships status. Also as a woman I’ve unconsentingly absorbed pervasive and toxic myths that our culture throws around such as –
Women are not whole without a partner
Women need to compete against peers for partners
Women have an expiration date
Along with those myths I have my own personal toxic myth that developed in my adolescence – I’m too much and until I acted like I should I wouldn’t be worthy of a partner.
I carried these myth and their evolutionary offspring for a very long time. It made me feel lost at times, it made me feel less than at times, it made me feel like I was unworthy of even being seen. And it FUCKING sucked.
I could spend three hundred pages describing all the ways I diligently worked to dismantle those myths. I will in future posts but for the purpose of this moment I want to talk about my destination.
I found the one. The person who checks off every box on my list, the person who brings joy, love and empathy everyday, the person who sees the goddess that I am. That person is me.
So last month on my birthday I married myself. The path from feeling unworthy to unconditionally loving myself was neither short nor easy. It is also a path I have to choose to walk each day. But May, 19th 2020 I made it clear to myself and the universe that I no longer prescribe to those myths. I choose to love myself without reservation, without caveat, without exception. I choose to love myself passionately. I choose to prescribe to the belief that I am whole and the only love I need to be worthy of is my own.
Did I ever imagine spending my birthday quarantined and celebrating by marrying myself, nope. Is it the most strangely symbolic and beautiful thing I’ve ever done, quite possibly. I spent hours, days, weeks, alone and in that time I created a ritual of self-love. I bought a dress, a ring, made myself a beautiful meal, a cake, a playlist, took photos and performed my own ceremony.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t space for a partner in my life. I still want another soul to share and create future chapters of my life with. But now that person doesn’t have to fill a hole, or have the unasked for burden of fighting my myths. That person now gets to stand at my side as an equal, as a partner, as the peanut butter to my jelly, both of us brilliant on our own and even fucking better when you put us together.
The world that constantly asks women to try to be someone else. Somebody thinner, richer, smarter, quiter, smaller, more productive, more giving, more available, more maternal, more supportive, less demanding, less emotional, less threatening, a virgin but also a whore, strong but also delicate, all without flaw or of bodily function.
Self-love is my antidote to this. I have to take a dose of it daily. It is my superpower without it I become Clark Kent – someone pretending to be less than than I really am.
With Love,
Erin
*Original Post Date June 23rd, 2020
My vows
