I heard that melissa is cheating on you and I responded with I know and he said the exact right words to me he said what did you expect how did I get to this place so I want you to imagine me palms sweaty my heart is racing and I've just asked the scariest question that I've ever asked up until that point in my life will you be my girlfriend and she said yes and I was six I was in the second grade and I just fallen in love for the very first time I was flying
I couldn't even believe it her name was Elizabeth and she was the most beautiful girl that I've ever seen in my life she wore these dresses with matching bows in her like curly blond hair I didn't even know what it meant to be a boyfriend and a girlfriend and then what that evolved into was we spent all of our recesses together and I don't know how long the relationship lasted you know because time is so different when you're in love and you're six when I walked down the aisle of this library and I see Elizabeth
with Chad Chad was everything I wasn't tall and stocky and red hair and freckles and I was a tiny little half asian gap-toothed kid with a dream of true love and it's not that I disliked Chad but I knew that Elizabeth disliked chat in fact she had told me over and over and over again that she actually hated Chad and naive innocent little me just like walks up woody what are you doing well I'm looking at books with Chad okay but I thought you hated chat and she says these words that would shape the next
two decades of my life she says no I don't hate him you're the one I hate and she turns around and she walks away with Chad I was left standing there confused and six-year-old me created the story that there was something wrong with me and I couldn't see it and I I made a decision in that moment that I was gonna do everything I could to be the perfect boyfriend I was the Beast and I needed my Belle or 17 years old when I was hanging out with my friends after work and Katie walked into
the room she went to a distant different high school so I'd never seen her before but the moment that she walked in I knew that was my person I knew it in the core of my being and so I got her number well that sounds way cooler I actually asked her friend for her number but I did eventually call that number and we talked all night until we were both literally falling asleep on the phone and that became a nightly ritual and I did everything I could to be the best boyfriend ever she didn't have
a car but I had a car so where do you need me to drive you and life was good you know what I mean like mini golf go-karts kind of good I even opened my heart again and yeah there were some things that weren't exactly nice to experience like the nights that I would call her and I wouldn't get an answer the text messages that didn't get returned the various things that were indicators I ignored all of them she was perfect she was my bell and then one day we're at the mall and we're walking
out of the gap and as we're walking out I go to put my hand on her shoulder not even a arm around her but just put my hand on her shoulder and as soon as my fingers touch down she reacts as if I've shocked her and she yells at me don't touch me and she storms off I was back to the six-year-old version of me in that library not knowing what I had just done but obviously something I did was worth hating and I felt my whole world kind of crumbling around me and that led
to a series of relationships over several years of me trying to find people to fill me up but I was a bucket with a giant hole in it so every time someone would come in and fill me up at all it would just go right out I hit a rock bottom with a woman named Melissa we were lifeguards we worked together and she let me know that this guy Dan was going to give her a ride home and then one day my friend called me up and he said hey man I have to tell you
something I heard that melissa is cheating on you and I responded with I know and I remember sitting up on the lifeguard chair watching Dan's car drive off with my girlfriend in the passenger seat and knowing and he said the exact right words to me he said what did you expect why are you always trying to see the best in people ignoring signs of a lack of integrity or that they might not actually care about me because I saw them in their highest but what it made me realize was that I wasn't doing the same
thing for myself I wasn't giving myself the benefit of the doubt that's what I was doing for everyone else in my life but not for me I was spending every ounce of energy to be the right match for what everyone else wanted me to be the good student for my parents the good athletes for my friends and the perfect boyfriend and so for me it became about seeing what I had allowed myself to believe that there was something wrong with me and deciding that I was going to change that that I was worth changing that
your self-love journey starts when you say you love yourself enough to be worthy of making changes in your life you do not have to accept the things about your life that you do not love you don't need to like yourself to love yourself unconditionally you are ever evolving with every single moment every single breath that you take and so that journey to become the person that you want to be the person who truly loves themself all of you the person who designs a life that reflects back to you how amazing life could be that starts
by loving yourself unconditionally everything I've been through has brought me to be this person this man standing here today because I am enough and that's enough just by showing up and you are enough this very moment you are not because you are you [Music]
