Digging Deeper

So I've given up dating with the idea that it would be unfair to my potential suitors. How can I put myself out there, have someone fall in love with me, only to die on them? I can promise you happily ever after, but I just can't tell you how long that ever after will be - it may be sooner than you'd have imagined. I feel it would be like trying to sell some sucker a lemon - sure it's a pretty car, but it may just start giving you problems here and there, slowly torturing and frustrating you until it just gives up and dies in the middle of rush hour traffic on I-95. Yep, I likened myself to a car and one that sucks. Pretty great attitude to lug around day after day. And, I've made myself into a martyr that has given up dating to potentially save a mystery man from a broken heart. What a gal!

Let's dig deeper. Let's suppose this is an excuse. Could it be that I'm worried about that man looking at me and seeing a lemon, so I cut him off at the pass? Perhaps, I put myself out there and no one is interested. Who am I saving the broken heart, him or me? Maybe it's not so much that I don't want to sell someone a lemon as that I don't want to have to sell so hard, knowing it's a lemon. Yep, self-deprecating again.

This is where I'm going wrong. In either scenario, I'm ruining any shot of happiness with someone else by not seeing myself as worthy. Am I worthy of someone loving me, if it's only for a short time? Am I worthy of being loved even if it means that someone's going to have to be my caretaker at some point? Am I worthy of being loved if my body is full of scars and my hair is not the long flowing mane it once was? Will someone find me attractive again and worthy of all the work that's involved in loving me?

It all starts with me. I need to read that paragraph and answer those questions for myself and say "hell ya!" or better yet, "duh!" If I see myself as a lemon, that's what I project. I want a man to look at me as if I'm the most beautiful, amusing, brilliant woman he's ever met. And I need to see that woman first, before I'll ever be able to enveil her to the world.

I'm not sure if it's time to start dating again, but it's definitely time to start making lemonade out of this lemon.