I stopped painting my toenails.

I stopped painting my toenails recently for the first time in a while and it’s teaching me something.

I have always kept nail polish on my toes because I didn’t like the way my feet looked without it. Recently I acknowledged this insecurity so I took the nail polish off and forced myself to stay with my toes unpainted and seen by others until I felt confident. 

When my friends and I would talk about little things we wanted in a man I would say “ I kinda want to have a man who isn’t grossed out by feet, I want him to like feet. He doesn’t need to have a foot fetish but I need him to not be bothered by feet.” 

I wanted a guy that liked feet because I needed him to validate my feet for me, because I couldn’t myself. I didn’t like my feet all that much, so I needed him to like something that I didn’t like about myself. To be unbothered by something I was bothered by. 

I know what you’re thinking.. really Ali.. feet? Who cares if you’re insecure about your feet? 

But its not about feet.

You know those moments when you’re insecure about something and you want people to know you’re insecure about that thing so you point it out as if telling them will show them like “yeah I’m aware of it.” As if announcing your awareness of your own self deprecation is supposed to make them think “ well at least she knows it..” As if saying “yeah I know I look crazy in this dress ” makes you feel less crazy in that dress. When it doesn’t. You still feel insecure. 

You think “if my significant other, the person who is supposed to be the one who finds me most attractive likes my feet, or this dress, or my new haircut then I can have cute feet or this dress can be pretty or this haircut is a good one.” The validity of your appearance or your personality lies in the other person's hands.

The validation you search for in little tiny ways, even as little as the toes of your feet are part of a bigger picture. 

 

So where does the hope to find validation for the things you believe you cannot fulfill yourself, come into the dating life? 

I just got out of a relationship and I’ve been thinking back to what got me into the relationship in the first place. Searching for what made me stay so long till I realized I deserved more and needed to move on.

Sometimes I feel like I'm still that little girl watching a princess movie waiting for the prince to sweep her off her feet and complete her life, complete her path, complete my path.

For me, if I had a significant other, it meant stability. It meant I finally found my way. I did what I was put on this earth to do, find a man. I searched and I searched and I found him and now I am going to put “the one” or “my person” on a post it note, stick it to his forehead and walk around showing everyone I DID IT. I made my path valid and I had a relationship to show for it.

But when I stuck that post it note on their head I was signing up for abandoning my own needs for the sake of convincing myself that my path was valid. I would put up with anything from that point on and convince myself that if I kept putting in the work, this would work. Because I NEED it to work. I can't go back to square one.. Being single.. I thought, I’ve worked so hard for this! I’ve been through enough with guys, this HAS to be the one. There’s no way I am meant to “put up” with more. 

I will have to do this whole thing over again, I thought. The day I got the title of being someone else’s girlfriend for the first I felt like I was able to catch my breath. Like I was waiting on the side of the street with the rest of the Disney princesses waving my hand at the carriages passing by, yearning for a prince to want me as their end game so I didn’t have to be the last one left waiting on the street. 

I did what everyone tells you to do every holiday party when they say “have you found anyone yet?,” “ are you talking to any boys yet?” it makes you constantly think.. should I be searching for them more? Am I not looking in the right places? Am I not looking enough? I'm 22, should I have already found someone by now? 

The same way people ask “have you lost your virginity yet?” As if it’s something that needs to be lost. 

Or what about the “don’t worry your person is out there” as a line we use to comfort people. It makes you think, should I be worried?

Is that why I worry in the first place? Because people make me feel like I should be worrying if that special someone hasn’t come along yet? 

It starts to create an illusion that everything about life will make sense when that person comes along and you just need to go out and find them. 

 

If you’re not on dating apps and going out every weekend you're “deterring” men. If you are particular with the types of men you kiss or let into your life you are “too picky.” If you haven’t kissed anyone in a while “you should be getting out there more.”

Society makes us feel like we were put on this earth to find another person and once you do your path will be considered valid. This happens with jobs too. That career we spend all our time, schooling, and parents money, trying to chase. As if a job or a person is supposed to complete us, make us who we are and if we haven’t found that yet we should be worried.. 

You graduate college and you are expected to get onto the right career path and if you don't you “wasted a degree” or if you get out of a relationship you put so much time into you think you “wasted your time.” 

But what if there are multiple jobs that make you feel fulfilled? Or are there no jobs that make you feel fulfilled?  What if the ways in which we choose to live a fulfilling life is not a textbook career path or in another person?

And what if no amount of attention will ever make you feel validated? And no amount of love from another person will fill up the holes in you made by the lack of love you give yourself.

What if the answers to meeting all our personal needs lies in our own bodies. Not in the physical achievements we have to put on our resume or in the person we choose to say ‘I do” to.

What if we were just put on this earth to accept ourselves in all forms, work everyday to meet our own needs, and figure out ways we can complete ourselves without the presence of another person. A calling to ourselves to just be. 

And that’s where my timeline mindset stems from. The spiraling out of control thoughts that I need to know what my future holds, that I need to be fully in control of the next pivotal part of my life. It sounds like me worrying about leaving college without finding the person I am going to spend the rest of my life with because that's how ”so and so” found their husband. Or when I worried so much that I was going to be losing my virginity too late in life. But the timeline doesn’t really matter at all and what does too late even mean? What does too early even mean? This perception of time and what needs to get done when and what path we should be on at this age doesn’t help us get any further along on it.

My dad always says it’s about the journey, not the destination. 

We can get so fixated on the prince that's going to sweep us up. The person who’s going to walk into our lives and magically reciprocate the love we give, or reach a job after years of schooling and magically expect to be fulfilled every day past that. But it's not about your end person or your longest lasting career path. What if life’s about all the jobs in between where you got paid minimum wage but you made friends and learned what hard work was along the way. Or not about the person you marry but all the ones in between that taught you what strength was and where your worth lied. The ones you poured into that couldn’t pour into you back, until you realized it's time you started filling your own bucket. 

What if we weren’t always working towards taking the right path but rather creating our own path as we go. Allowing it to crumble and rise and get patched up as we find our way. And instead of looking forward or behind us we just look down at the bricks we’re standing on below us. Grateful for where we have gotten ourselves. Proud of all the roads we’ve gone down. Content with our current state of life and not ruminating in the past and future.

So when I realized I wasn’t getting loved the way I needed, I had to understand that the relationship in front of me was not the relationship I envisioned it to be. I was hit with a wrath of reality. I was overcome by shame and anger that I allowed myself to have accepted this for so long. I was grieving the life I made up in my head and all the bare minimum moments I romanticized so I can hide my heart from the fact that none of this was truly enough for me. 

As I sit with these new thoughts I am understanding that this journey really is not about the destination and who I end up with. So I got off the carriage and walked back to my own home. I looked down at my feet and realized my body, the home that has always been able to provide me with what I need to feel fulfilled, is complete and whole without the prince, so I take the polish off and smiled. I didn’t need polish to make myself feel pretty and I didn’t need a prince to make me feel whole. I am complete. 

-Ali Marriott