II. No One Can Convince You of the Life YOU lived.

People often judge us with the word “should.”

“You shouldn’t like him,”

“You should get over him,”

“You should join X,”

“You should do Y.”  

Should. Should. Should.

This word implies an obligation.

I had a relationship that I never felt proud of in front of my friends; it was somewhere between dating and going steady. Getting to once again hold someone I thought I’d lost and having a connection still exist after high school, I thought it was fine! My heart was already two-and-a-half years in, so he was like family and the unconditional affection was there. On the horizon, it seemed like things were striding closer and closer to being once again “official,” so I felt I could honestly answer the question of, “So, what’s been going on in your guy life?” as it began coming up at coffee dates.

But, it was always—and only—behind a venti decaf Americano that I felt like my relationship wasn’t legitimate. It was when I had to put “us” into words that I felt judged and more accurately, “accountable” to my friends. In my heart, he was more than boyfriend and it sickeningly hurt when my friends and I would be talking about issues within our associations and when a comparison came up, the conversation would be appended by, “I mean, you guys aren’t official, but it’s kind of similar…” In front of them was the only time I ever felt the need to classify my relationship; and I mean, I felt that “need.” I began dreadeding coffee dates and texts for “updates” (“How are things going with Z? :)” I hardly knew what “we” were, so to have to explain it to my girlfriends? (It’s only a year later now that I can confirm it was “dating”—going out and getting to know someone. Yet, so much more than that--and the defining process continued!) But, I honestly didn’t even think there would be backlash, loving “warnings,” or any flak from them. It was when I couldn’t call him my “boyfriend” like they could theirs that I first saw the distinction.

Yet, how? My heart suffered just as much, my happiness was just as much, if not, more! So, my relationship couldn’t count or hold a full weight just because he wasn’t my official “boyfriend?” I was just as faithful and devoted, goodness, if not more; like I said, I’d invested in him long before they even met their current romances!  

No one was in my mind during those Starbucks dates except me: feeling like I owed them an explanation (and a better one than I held in each instance), feeling inadequate, sensing their “label” suspicion. And afterwards, it was only me feeling the stress of how I’d presented myself, the thrill of getting his text that night, and the joy of finding myself once again in his arms under the moon’s grin.

Only I was there. Only I know how those things made me feel, whether it was feeling judged and what I did with it afterwards as well as knowing he, the number one I wanted, loved me and I had the purest happiness, not settling and sacrificing nothing, and that was the bottom line. Only I knew what thoughts were running through my mind. Only I have my perception. Only you have your perception.

My friends can tell me one thing and it might be true—but, it is only true when I check it against the truth *I* know of *my* life and find its existence. It’s difficult sharing things with friends and coming to a conversation place of “agreeing to disagree”—about your own life, no less! Our friends love us and will fight tooth and nail to protect us. I often had to remind myself of that; to take a moment and step in their sneakers and flats and know it was all from a place of loving me and wanting me to have the best, especially before I let the anger and hurt rise within me. It’s only this knowledge that simmers the boil down into stillness. In this case, it was just wishing I didn’t have to answer for what had been a long time my private garden, palace, and universe of still-knowing smiles and an always growing bond.

Let all things in your life be approved by you—not anyone else. It is your life, your decisions, and your happiness. You are the one in your skin who lives with these things. Our friends and others in countless categories around us can advise us, but they don’t wear our skin or our “life.” They can tell us they think, want, and believe about our own life, but are they the ones who are going to live it? Before you accept the “constructive feedback,” “warnings,” questioning, or negative words and statements people say, check it against yourself and your life. That’s why the possessive pronoun in front of that wonderful noun—“life”—is about you.