chapter twelve
The Perfect Stranger For The Perfect Rebound
It wasn’t long after Jax left, I met Liam.
I’ve just arrived back home from dropping off Liam at the bus depot. I opened the door to my apartment. Buddy is running towards me (tail wagging and all), and then he stepped around me. He let out a cute little whimper and then looked back at me with his adorable sad puppy eyes when he realized that Liam was not behind me. He knows that Liam is gone. I reached down to rub his head to help ease his broken heart. “It’s okay Buddy, he loved you too,” I said. I took a deep breath and I can still smell Liam's cologne as it lingered in the apartment. It brought a smile to my face. The past two weeks that I spent with Liam were fantastic and both Buddy and I adored him.
I walked towards my bed and removed the sheets and blanket from the mattress, and then I went over to the couch and grabbed the sheets that Liam used for the past two weeks. I placed them on the floor just outside the washroom, to remind myself to do the laundry after I took a shower . . .
. . . I’m in the process of washing off the conditioner from my hair and I can hear Buddy continuing to whimper and whine just outside the door. “It’s okay!” I yelled out to him. He was really sad and I felt his pain. As I finished taking a shower, I opened the shower curtain and my eyes instantly filled with tears as I saw that Buddy had buried himself in the sheets that Liam used. He looked up at me and let out a long and sad whimper. My heart melted and I let the tears flow down my face. I bent over; sat beside him, put my hand over his paw and with the softest tone to my voice I said to him. “I know I miss him already too.”
I'm not going to get into too much detail what happened between Liam and I. What I will say is that Liam was a stranger I met hiking and I'm glad to say he has now become a good friend. Till this day, we continue to keep in touch. It makes me delighted hearing about his adventures as he continues his travels and how happy he is with his new girlfriend.
I didn't know it then but in the beginning of July, I was still fucked up. I was insecure and still in the process of regaining my confidence. I was not purposely looking for external validation but it was something I definitely needed at that time. Liam was that external validation. I was still struggling with a void in my heart and I was trying to fill it up with the wrong input.
Shortly after Liam and I met, we spent two weeks hanging out together and as you can probably guess things got physical. It was nice to get back in the sack with someone else other than Jaxon. I was deprived from seeing what else was out there for thirteen years. That feeling of being desired by someone else was like a drug to me and I enjoyed every minute of the experience. The experience with Liam was so much better than a one-night stand. Beyond the sex the conversations with him were effortless. I didn’t overthink with Liam, everything was natural and there was no pressure. We acted like a couple, but we weren’t a couple. There was this unspoken agreement between us, a mutual respect, and we both knew what this casual and temporary relationship was for.
What I appreciated most about Liam is his honesty, there was no bullshit with him, and there were no mind games. We both knew that we liked each other, but we knew that what we were doing was temporary. Liam was open about everything and it was refreshing. He was exactly what I needed at the time to reboot my confidence in myself and confidence that there are still a lot of great men out there. After my date with Tyson, I wondered if any good men were out there anymore. Liam proved me wrong.
To this day, I don’t think Liam realizes how much he helped me progress.
After he left the city to continue his journey, I spent days . . . weeks, missing him. I knew I liked him, but I also knew that I didn’t like him enough to waste time being sad from his absence. Liam didn’t reject me. I also wasn’t naive about our situation. I knew what I was getting into from the very beginning, a temporary ‘relationship’. So I knew I should not have been that sad. But for some reason I felt extremely rejected and this feeling paralyzed me. Having this feeling made me realize I still had a lot of work to do in myself. I spent the rest of my summer building momentum and rebuilding my self-esteem and my confidence.
It was the best summer I could've asked for, and it all began with Liam!
“Don’t jump into another relationship with someone to fill the void left from a previous relationship. Work hard to mend the void yourself and you’ll attract the right person to build a stronger relationship with.”
REFLECTIONS / LESSONS LEARNED:
External validation . . . why do we need it? Why do we need someone else’s validation that we are good enough? Why do we care so much of what people think of us? Shouldn’t our self worth come from within?
Majority of my life I focused on believing that my worth was valued by superficial and external sources, and I was not alone feeling like this. How did we come to believing that those things are the most important things in life? Is this what is believed to be valuable in society?
We were wired at a young age what is considered valuable and beautiful and that receiving praise from others is what will define us. For example; when we do well in an assignment in elementary school we receive gold star stickers for our accomplishments and praise from our teachers (and from our parents and friends). And if we don’t receive a gold star or praise we may feel like we’re not good enough. At a young age it was been ingrained in our brains that receiving external validation is what validated our value.
Social media has escalated the need for external validation. We don’t just receive the validation from several people we know, but now from hundreds . . . thousands of people. We see our value more through numbers. We not only measure our value through our salaries, but also on how many likes we receive on a photo/video, how many friends we have on Facebook or followers on Instagram, price tags on clothes and cars, square footage of our house, how many people we’ve dated or matched with on Tinder/Bumble/POF, how many people we have slept with or are dating at the same time, the pounds on a scale, etc.
When we don’t receive the gold star stickers, praise, and certain amount of external validation then the possibility of growing up with low self-esteem increases. Our identity becomes defined by the those external sources, rather than what is inside of us.
I was not one that grew up receiving external praise and as I mentioned in a previous chapter I had very low self confidence. However, through time and experience I learned (and still am learning) that it is never about the materialistic things or getting praise externally that matter; my career/salary and academic achievements doesn’t define me as a person, my integrity does . . . People don’t have to like what I post on FB or Instagram, I post them to share my experiences to the people who truly care for me . . . It’s not the quantity of friends, but the quality of those friends (I surround myself with people who inspire me) . . . No matter what my car looks like or how much it cost, it just had to get me from point A to point B safely . . . My success is not interpreted by the clothes I wear or how much my clothes cost . . . I would rather live out of a suitcase/backpack than live in a mansion or a white picket fence house, because I find value in the experiences in life rather than having a big house (not saying that owning a house is a bad thing, just not for me) . . . Being single and sleeping/not sleeping with numerous people doesn’t mean that I am less lovable than someone who is married or in a committed relationship . . . the diamond size and cost of my engagement ring will not predetermine how successful a marriage will be (kudos to those who have beautiful diamond rings, I had a blue sapphire ring which I think was as beautiful) . . . My beauty is not defined by my weight or love handles but from my character and how I treat myself and other people . . . etc.
It is up to us, as individuals, what we want to be defined as and whether we let those external validations bring more value in our lives. However, if you let the external validations give our lives more meaning, we also have to be aware of the damage it will cause.
Even though I knew that my value was not defined by who loved/likes me or by what people thought of me, I still however gained a lot from my experience with Liam. At the time I met Liam, I still needed that external validation that I was desirable to someone and that I can be liked by someone else other than Jaxon. However, I HATED the feeling the I required this validation. I knew that I didn’t want to feel like I was chasing validation and I did not want to be terrified of rejection. Technically I was not rejected from either Liam or Jaxon, but I still felt insecure. To get away from needing external validation, I decided that I needed to focus on me . . . alone . . . without praise/validation from external sources.
🎧 - Jonas Blues ft. JP Cooper: Perfect Strangers
🎬 - Friends with Benefit (2011)
📖 - Mark Manson: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Read this during the summer over and over again! Fucking loved it!)
🤾♀️🚴🏻🏊🏻🏃🏻♀️ - Hiking
FEEDBACK / COMMENTS / THOUGHTS /YOUR REFLECTION / ANSWER QUESTIONS BELOW:
Do you thrive on external validation? Compliments? How has it helped you? How has it limit you?
There is this saying; “To get over someone, get under someone.” That’s technically what I did with Liam, but again was not proud of that. What are your thoughts on this?
You don’t have to agree with me regarding external validation, so what are your thoughts on external validation?