As I told you before, for the past two weeks, I’ve been a potato.
A potato with absolutely no desire to talk to people, do things, leave the house, or make myself look presentable.
And honestly? I was doing a pretty good job at it.
It could have been the herpes. It could have been being unemployed. It could have been the never-ending rain, which made leaving my bed feel like an unnecessary challenge. Or maybe it was the six planets in retrograde.
Who knows?
Maybe it was all of them working together to make sure I experienced the full package.
Whatever the reason, I wasn’t feeling like myself. And when that happens, I tend to disappear into my own little world until I figure out how to come back.
I wanted to talk about this because I think we sometimes have a very unrealistic idea of what adulthood is supposed to look like.
We imagine that, at some point, we’ll have everything figured out. We’ll know what we want, what we’re doing, and how to deal with whatever life throws at us.
Except that’s not how it works.
Adulthood isn’t about always knowing what’s good for you. It’s about making decisions without having all the answers, asking questions nobody seems to know how to answer, and figuring things out as you go.
Most of the time, you’re learning while you’re already in the middle of the mess.
Sometimes, you need a little time to rediscover yourself. A day, a week, two weeks in my case, or even a month.
And that’s okay.
You don’t always need to have a plan for getting back on your feet. Sometimes, you just need to give yourself enough time to understand what’s going on inside your head.
The important part isn’t how quickly you bounce back. It’s that, eventually, you find your way back to yourself.
Because it’s personal. Nobody else can do that part for you.
But that doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone.
And that’s what I want to talk about today.
My friends.
Let me put it this way: we have a lot of problems. Most of them are self-inflicted, and a considerable number of them probably require professional supervision.
We’re a little insane. Okay, sometimes a lot insane.
But these women? They’re amazing.
They’re strong, beautiful, intelligent, and have hearts as big as the ocean. They’re the kind of women who will show up for you, tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it, and then help you make an even worse decision five minutes later.
Because balance is important.
And I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Friday night started with a dilemma in our group chat.
One of our girls had started questioning herself.
Was she beautiful enough? Was she skinny enough? Was there something wrong with her? And if she had so much to offer, why was she still single?
You know. The usual Friday-night existential crisis.
We laughed at first.
Not because her feelings weren’t valid, but because we’d been there. My best friend and I had spent our teenage years asking ourselves similar questions, trying to understand why the boys we liked didn’t always treat us the way we thought we deserved.
We’d met the wrong guys. The kind who made us question our looks, our bodies, our personalities, and sometimes even our hearts.
The kind who could make you feel like you weren’t enough, even when you were giving them more than they deserved.
And the funny thing is, when you’re young, you rarely question whether the person in front of you is good enough for you.
You question whether you’re good enough for them.
You look in the mirror and wonder whether you should lose a little weight, change your hair, wear something different, or become a little less yourself.
You replay conversations, analyse messages, and search for answers in every little thing they do.
And somehow, the more confused they make you, the harder you try to understand them.
Because maybe, if you could just figure out what you were doing wrong, you could finally make things work.
It took us years to understand how ridiculous that was.
And yet, here we were, having this conversation again.
My heart broke a little because the woman we were talking about is extraordinary.
She’s strong, she’s beautiful, and she could probably beat you to death with her bare hands. She was a karate champion, after all. I wouldn’t recommend testing her patience.
And still, even she has her moments.
We call them moments because sometimes that’s all they are. Little episodes when the questions start wandering into our minds, and suddenly, all the confidence we’ve built seems to disappear for a while.
Am I enough?
Am I attractive enough?
Why am I still single?
What is it that other women have that I don’t?
And perhaps the most dangerous question of all:
What’s wrong with me?
Because once you start asking yourself that question, it’s surprisingly easy to turn someone else’s inability to love you properly into evidence that you’re somehow unlovable.
So, naturally, we did what any emotionally stable group of women would do.
We started talking.
And by talking, I mean we began analysing the situation, sharing our experiences, reminding her who she was, and collectively losing our minds in the group chat.
We have a talent for this.
One of us starts doubting herself, and suddenly, we’re all lawyers presenting evidence in a court of law.
Exhibit A: every reason she’s amazing.
Exhibit B: the men who made her question it.
Exhibit C: the fact that we have all, at some point, lost our minds over a man who probably couldn’t explain his own feelings if you gave him a PowerPoint presentation.
And somewhere between the jokes, the reassurance, and our very passionate speeches about how wonderful she is, we realised something.
The men we’d met in our past hadn’t changed all that much.
Different faces. Different names. Different circumstances.
But sometimes, the same behaviour. The same confusion. The same inability to recognise what was right in front of them.
And there we were, years later, still trying to remind one another that their behaviour wasn’t a measurement of our worth.
We laughed again.
Because what else could we do?
We’d spent so many years believing that the right man would finally make us feel beautiful, desirable, chosen, and enough.
As if those things were his to give us in the first place.
And somewhere along the way, we decided that we were done letting other people’s opinions determine how we felt about ourselves.
At least, that’s the plan.
We’re a work in progress. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
So we made a promise.
We would keep working on ourselves and on each other. We’d remind one another of our worth when one of us forgot it. We’d stop allowing the opinions of men to dictate how we saw ourselves.
And when one of us inevitably had another existential crisis over a man who couldn’t communicate to save his life, the rest of us would be there to remind her of everything she’d forgotten about herself.
We wouldn’t always get it right. We wouldn’t magically become women who never doubted themselves again.
But we’d keep trying.
Together.
And after all the talking, the laughing, the reassurance, and the collective character assassination of men who weren’t even in the room, we smiled.
Because, at the end of the day, we might have shitty days, shitty moods, and shitty exes.
We might question ourselves when we should be sleeping. We might overthink a message that deserves no more than two seconds of our attention. We might occasionally forget everything we’ve learned the hard way and need our friends to remind us of it all over again.
We’re human.
And sometimes, being human means knowing exactly what you’d tell your best friend while struggling to believe those same words about yourself.
But that’s why we have each other.
To remind one another who we are when life, heartbreak, insecurity, or a particularly questionable man makes us forget.
To celebrate each other’s victories, sit through each other’s breakdowns, and laugh about the things that once made us cry.
To remind one another that being single doesn’t mean being unwanted, that being rejected doesn’t mean being inadequate, and that someone else’s inability to recognise your worth doesn’t make that worth disappear.
And most importantly, to make sure none of us has to figure everything out alone.
Because I’ve learned that love comes in many forms.
Sometimes, it looks like romance, flowers, and someone holding your hand.
Other times, it looks like a group chat on a Friday night, a hundred messages telling you to get your shit together, and your friends reminding you that you’re a fucking catch.
Sometimes, love is someone bringing you flowers.
Sometimes, it’s someone telling you that the man you’re crying over isn’t worth ruining your mascara.
And sometimes, it’s having people who will let you cry, listen to your nonsense, laugh with you, and still remind you of your worth when you’re ready to try again.
We don’t always need someone to fix our problems.
Sometimes, we just need someone to remind us that our problems don’t define us.
And when I think about the past two weeks, about feeling disconnected from myself and struggling to find the motivation to do anything, I realise how grateful I am to have these women in my life.
Because even when I wasn’t feeling my best, even when I didn’t have much to give, the love was still there.
No performance required. No explanation necessary. No need to pretend I had everything under control.
Just people who love me, and whom I get to love right back.
And if there’s one thing I hope we never forget, it’s this:
We don’t have to earn love by being beautiful enough, successful enough, thin enough, interesting enough, or put together enough.
We don’t have to be the happiest version of ourselves every single day to deserve the people who care about us.
And we certainly don’t need a man to confirm what the women who know us best have been telling us all along.
We’re enough.
On the good days, when we feel beautiful and confident and capable of conquering the world.
And on the bad days, when we don’t want to leave the house, question every decision we’ve ever made, and seriously consider whether moving to another country and changing our names would solve all our problems.
Don’t judge. We’ve all considered it.
Because at the end of the day, life will keep happening. We’ll fall in love, fall apart, make mistakes, learn lessons, and probably repeat a few of them because apparently, personal growth isn’t always a straight line.
But hopefully, we’ll keep having each other.
And maybe that’s one of the most beautiful things about growing up: realising that while romantic love can be wonderful, it isn’t the only love that can make you feel seen, understood, and safe.
Sometimes, the women beside you are the ones who help you find your way back to yourself.
And that kind of love?
That’s something worth holding on to.
Unconditionally. Always.
Until next time. 🤍
