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When you analyse it, for too many of us, love actually means need—to belong, to have a companion, to not be lonely, to feel normal, and accepted.

But need is dangerous. It allows toxicity on so many levels, and it makes you stop thinking logically because need is not organic—need is forced, always.

Love, in its perfect state, is always organic, not rushed, not sought out, and this love can not come until we do something that will prove incredibly difficult to achieve—the complex yet simple act of loving ourselves.

Not an egotistical love or a narcissistic love, but love without filters or secrets. The kind of love that comes from understanding and being comfortable in your own skin, happy with everything that makes you so amazing.

We hear it all the time, “you have to love yourself,” but those are words flying in the air like a parent telling a child, “be a good boy.” The boy doesn’t understand nor feels what that means. We are similar in that way.

I searched for this answer for 62 years. I suffered, and I wondered if I was inadequate, and wanted to know if something was wrong with me every time that another one of my deep relationships ended. All the times I sat there mourning and crying alone, feeling empty and lost—I needed them. But did I love them? It’s hard to tell.

And one day, when the concept became clear, after testing my therapist and all of my friends’ patience to the limit, it came to me and I wrote this:

Only you can fix things.

Only you can break the toxic patterns. Only you can realise that you don’t need anyone and that you are amazing all on your own.

Not only is this true that you don’t need anyone, you for sure don’t need someone’s cruelty or indifference controlling you or playing with your mind.

But it is only you who can decide to choose normality. It is also you—not your friends, not your family, not anyone—who will know when it is time to start to respect and love yourself. When it’s time to take action by completely severing the cords attached to all of that which hurts you and to release the energy that was draining you. There is no other way.

Then freedom will come. Calm will come. Clarity will come. And by understanding how to no longer need anyone, you will then discover how to instead love and receive love.