By now everyone knows I grew up in a dysfunctional family, though I believe everyone’s family is dysfunctional in some way. But it scarred me, it scarred my heart. The only love that I was able witness love from a parent to a child. I saw hate and despair as child between a mothers and fathers eyes, not love.
So naturally I craved love. I wanted to experience love. I wanted to know what it was like. So I immediately at the age of 14 decided to go online into chat-rooms and start a relationship with someone ONLINE. First off, I lied about my age, weight, and appearance. It was the person I WANTED to be. Blonde hair, blue eyes, athletic, and skinny. It ended badly. It ended me attached to a screen and keyboard just wanting to be with a person who had no idea who I was or what I was about. I fell into a deep depression after we “broke-up”. I wanted to die, I was in so much agony. Whereas I can laugh at it now because it was childish, back then it was so real. It was my life. My life was on the edge of ending because I someone decided they didn’t want to love me, I saw myself as worthless, disgusting, overweight teen, who never would be able to be loved ever again.
After college my life was settled down. Instead of trying to become friends with people I settled for the idea of I am okay with just my family. So I latched onto my family. I latched on to the aspect of them taking care of me. I latched onto the idea of never having to stand on my own two-feet. I latched onto the idea that dating online again was okay. At the age of 25 my life got complicated. I started being desperate for love again. I started going back into the free “online dating”. This time I was me, but desperately me. I wanted to be with anyone who showed me “love”. So I met a few random men offline. That was a mistake. All of that was a mistake.
I decided to pay for online dating. Nothing, I got no one. No one wanted to be with this pathetic girl who was desperate for love. No one wanted to be with this girl who didn’t have her life together. I didn’t know who I was, how could I expect someone to love me when I didn’t love myself? It starts with me. I began crying at night, calling out to the God wanting help, I wasn’t even a Christian then. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just knew I saw it in movies, my mom used to pray with me at night, this was what I supposed to do. I was desperate for love. I wanted pure love, no strings attached, no ‘you have to do this’ to love me.
As God started softening my heart without me knowing it, I got invited to my current church. I realized the love I was praying for was His love. I didn’t know who I was, He knows who I am, He knew what I was searching for. Whenever I start to feel lonely, whenever I start to feel as though I need someone by my side to be with me, to make me feel worthy and loved, I slip to my past and do the online dating again, but then I realized as I pray, I as I dig into the scripture I realized that I am okay. I am okay where I am. I am more than okay with just the love the Lord has for me. I found a community, a church that loves me, I found friends that I never knew I could be friends with. I found the love that Jesus wants me to have. I don’t need the love of a significant other to make me happy, to make me feel worthy. I can do that for myself for I am worthy because God tells me I am. I am a princess who deserves everything.
Tanya Elise 