don't you dare let them make you feel little

This story has been coming to my mind over and over lately. It was in college and I was on a date with the kind of boy who just couldn't make up his mind about me (I encountered a lot of those). It was like... I looked really good on paper and there wasn't anything "wrong" with me that they could put a finger on, so they just waited. Hoping they would like me enough to be serious... eventually. And as you can likely guess, that eventually never did come. Not for any one of them.

So here I was on my umpteenth date with this boy. He was handsome and older than me and we were driving in his car going somewhere. The windows were down, so it must have been summer. Somehow (gosh I have no idea how) the subject came around to deodorant or things that tasted bad or who even knows. But I said, "Have you ever tasted deodorant though? It. tastes. AWFUL.". He looked at me like I was some kind of oddity in a museum and laughed at me like I was an idiot.

Then, he proceeded to make me feel little.
He taunted and teased and wouldn't let it go. He kept making me smaller and smaller.
He made me feel crazy.

I kept trying to defend myself, but he kept coming back to how on earth I would know what it tastes like. And I felt so small and belittled and and embarrassed and couldn't think of why.

Maybe I am weird, I thought (this is called gaslighting, look it up, and run if you are dating this person). I knew there was some logical reason I knew what I knew, but I felt so little sitting there in the front seat that I just awkwardly laughed and tried to hold back tears. 

I forgot about that conversation for a long time until one day I licked my finger and tried to rub off a spot on my shirt. But what I thought was toothpaste wasn't toothpaste- it was deodorant. And when I went to lick my thumb to get the rest off, that AWFUL taste came flooding back to my memory and I remembered the perfectly normal, very human thing that I had done to learn what deodorant tastes like. 

I was mad at myself for a long time over that. I had let him make me feel little when he had no right to. I could have said something, I should have said something!

Nobody ever has a right to your feelings of self worth, but there will be people who will take it and run anyways.  You know, maybe he was raised like that. Maybe that was a knee-jerk, nervous response to a comment that made him feel uncomfortable (because heaven help them, but some people are weird talking about hygiene?). Maybe he has grown out of it, or realized it...  I don't know. What I do know is this: I'm not little. I'm not worth a little, I don't shine a little, my potential doesn't equate to a little. And nobody holds the right to make me feel that way. 

And I should have known in that very moment that I didn't want to be on constant dates with someone who made me feel anything less. I didn't then, but I do now. And I got really lucky to get Jay who thinks I can do anything in the whole world.

why dating is hard.

Dating was so hard.
Gosh, I was thinking about it the other day, and it was hard.
Sometimes I remember how fun dating was, and yes, that's true.
But overall, even if you're going on dates, and even if they're fun dates-
at the end of the day it's hard.

You know why?
Because you have options, and none of them are easy.
You can choose to be open and vulnerable and experience it fully.
Or you can block yourself off and put up walls and keep yourself safer from all that.
But it ends. Whatever it is for you, it ends.
The game is not meant to last.
There's going to be one that's right for you someday,
but until that one comes everyone else will be wrong.
That's the reality of it, and some days it sucks.
Sometimes it sucks because you wasted time on someone that was wrong,
and sometimes you're not even sure what was wrong at all- but it was.

But somehow when it ends, whatever it is, this little voice inside your head tells you you weren't enough. Sometimes it's glaringly obvious that they were not good enough for you, but that little voice is loud. It shouts, it's convincing. And then when they start dating someone else the little voice shouts that you weren't enough but they were. And when you're having a bad day it shouts. And when you see them online or in public it shouts.

It's terrible. And girls, it gets to us. Boys, you may not talk about it so much, but it gets to you too.

I'm here to tell you that it's a BIG FAT LIE.
You are good enough. You are more than good enough.
I bet if you compare strengths to strengths you are so far beyond whoever it was
that it seems silly you were ever there in the first place.

The fact of the matter is you were enough, you just weren't right.
And that's okay. Thank heavens they said something or you said something or whatever and however it happened it ended. Because sometimes being with the one that's right for you has bumps in the road- but can you imagine trying to do it all with someone that wasn't right? Maybe someone who didn't have the capacity to love you the way you ought to be loved? Or didn't appreciate your quirks?

I don't think it's asking for too much but I WANT SOMEONE TO LOVE MY WEIRDNESS.
[thanks for being that someone, Jay Winters]
And you should too.

Stick it out.
Find someone who loves you enough.
Find someone who loves your quirks and weirdness.
Find someone who will make you laugh, if that's what it is for you.
At minimum find someone you can laugh with.
But whatever it is you're looking for, know that you're enough.
You may have not been right for anyone yet, but you were enough for all of them.
You have always been good enough. You will always be enough.
But if they couldn't see that, then they were not right for you.

And that's ok.
So dating is hard, I know.
But keep on keeping on, because someday you'll find someone that's right for you.
God has a way of working it all out the way it's meant to be.