Theloopylululog

I wish someone had asked me this question earlier. Like atleast once every decade of my life.

I wish something had made me stop at every milestone I passed, every milemarker I crossed and question myself the same.

Every decade that I lived through, every milestone year that winked past me and every milemarker I crossed with considerable achievement; I looked outward for love that never seemed to stay no matter how hard I tried or how low I set the bar.

The one thing I wish I had started doing earlier…much, much earlier in life is to learn to love myself without shame, without guilt and without any conditions whatsoever.

From the time I became aware of myself, I learned to seek love outside. From my mother to my father followed by my bother to my sister I spent my childhood seeking love from family to feel fulfilled.

Friends took over the baton in my teens followed by loneliness and depression in the 20’s. It’s funny that my longest relationship till date has been with depression and not some prince charming from Timbuktu!

Love from men came by like someone anxiety-ridden rummaging through a lost and found box without a clue for what they were hunting for.

My quest for the elusive stayed on course.

It’s not like I never loved myself. I did. But I was too busy not liking myself which slowly transformed to hate. I was lost at sea not knowing how to ride the storm out.

Somehow through the years, falling in love with myself did not appear as the sails that would help my drowning ship to stabilize and sync with the rhythm of the waves.

Why?

I simply didn’t believe I deserved it. I wanted someone else to validate my worthiness. Someone to nominate me for the prize that was never theirs to hand me anyway!

It’s weird,isn’t it?

Every single time I said I love you to another, I somehow imagined love to be the other person and not the bridge it really is between us that brought us together. Never for once ready to face the glaring truth that had been trying so hard and so long to get my attention.

Through every passing year, I just insisted on going too far away for warmth from the fire that was always lit in my own heart.

Love was never about going on a quest and trying to hunt and chase it down in the other. It is always here. Within my own self.

Anyone and anything outside of myself is only a wee bit of wind that enables the fire already blazing within me to grow bigger and glow brighter. The winds dying out didn’t mean the fire dwindled away.

It burned. It burns. It always keeps burning.

It took me 40 odd years to realize this simple truth of life. 4 decades of becoming a puppet to my own delusions and dancing a futile dance to engage with the world, trying to bend to it’s charms and failing miserably.

The devastation came to head when the man around whom I built my entire future quit the relationship. I reached the nadir of my life unsure of life’s point henceforth.

Childishly assuming that he took everything with him; love, home, life…I even went to the entent of trying to kill myself.

It’s only during the darkest moments of utter despair and sheer helplessness like these that we find who we truly are, behind the many flimsy masks we wear. Having lived our whole lives, convincing ourselves to believe naively that we are the masks we created, I guess we need to be jolted out of our stupor by devastating moments like these.

It took the other to show me how far I had strayed from myself on a quest that never needed a reason to exist.

I needed to become homeless for the realisation to dawn that I am my own home and I am the love of my life.

It’s 5 years since the incident. 4 years since I broke through the webby mess I had become. 3 years since I began to fall in love with myself. 2 years since I realised there never was and there never could be anyone outside of me who could love me like I do. And 1 year since I pledged my hand to myself in front of a bathroom mirror; the mirror acting as the priest who wedded me to my own reflection.

The rest as they say is history. We have been living happily since. Walking into the horizon of ever after knowing it will last till death do us part.

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As a bonus, here’s my poetic response to a #whatdoyousee photo prompt challenge by Sadje that goes perfectly well with the theme of my answer to the daily prompt question; Self-Love — the key, the answer, the prayer and the purpose of my life.

What do you see # 358- 14 September, 2026

Here now…

Let me hold you, my child.

Let go…

Let go of the doubt wrecking you.

Trust is like sunshine, my child.

Until you enter the seas of your heart,

And let the waves melt you,

You will remain oblivious to the eternal warmth;

That has always protected, guarded, shielded,

And guided your feet towards the fire within.

*

Here now…

Let me hold you.

Let go…

Please let go of the without.

Look within, my child.

Look within yourself.

I am always here.

I am always here.

Within you.

Always within you.

Let go of the poisonous hold,

That is seeping through you,

Burning you to cinders.

**

Here now…

Hold my hand,

Hold what is always yours,

Never dying, Never fading,

Forever here.

***

Here now…

Hear now…

I am here now.

I am always here.

****

#WDYS

#Whatdoyousee