love & life
A lesson I learned at 15 that still shapes how I see relationships today.
I was 15, messing around in the hostel corridor, talking to some younger kid. Trying to be funny, I told him — “You’re a good boy. Someday you’ll find a girl like Cinderella.” Just playing around. Didn’t think twice about it.
But someone else was listening. A guy who worked there — security or something. Twice my age, maybe 31. I didn’t really know him. He came up to me a little while later and said, “Hey. Can I tell you something?”
I said sure.
He said, “What you told that kid? Pure bullshit.”
I was taken aback. He continued — “I’m 31. I’ve never hurt anyone. My whole life I’ve been helpful, kind, a good person. And in my entire life, not one person has genuinely cared about me. No friends. No girlfriend. People either took me for granted or didn’t want me around in the first place. So understand this — being good doesn’t make you loved.”
And then he just walked away.
I didn’t know what to say. I was 15. That kind of honesty doesn’t land softly on a 15-year-old. But somewhere in the back of my head, it stayed. And the older I got, the more I realized — he wasn’t lying.
The World Is Not Your Home
Growing up, I genuinely thought the world worked like my house did. Be a good kid, mom treats you well. Be a good person, the world treats you well. Simple equation. Fair system.
It’s not.
Maybe karma, destiny, the universe — whatever you want to call it — maybe that’s fair in the long run. But people? Society? No. They don’t operate by those rules. They never have. Your mom loved you because you were hers. That love came with your existence. The world doesn’t owe you that. The world doesn’t even know your name.
So if you’re sitting somewhere right now thinking — I’ve been nothing but good, I’ve never hurt anyone, why is nobody there for me — I want you to hear this clearly: there’s probably nothing wrong with you. You might just be unlucky. Some people have bad days. Some have bad years. Some go through stretches of life where the love they deserve is just… delayed. That’s real, and it’s painful, and you’re allowed to feel it.
But also — and this is where it gets uncomfortable — you have to be honest with yourself about which situation you’re actually in.
Do You Even Like Being You?
Here’s the question nobody wants to sit with. Not in a motivational poster way. For real.
When you wake up in the morning, open your eyes, and realize — yep, still me, another day — what’s the feeling? Is it something close to “alright, let’s go”? Or is it more like “great, another day to get through as this person”?
Because here’s the thing. You want someone to love you. But do you love you? You want someone to choose you every morning. But would you choose yourself?
“If you can’t stand being alone with yourself, why would someone else sign up for that full time?”
This isn’t me telling you to do affirmations in the mirror. This is much simpler than that. If you genuinely don’t like who you are right now — and deep down, you know the answer — then the work is there, not out in the world searching for someone to fix the feeling.
Others aren’t strangers who stumble into your life and love you out of nowhere. They pick up on everything. The confidence, the lack of it. The comfort you have in your own skin, or the absence of it. You can’t hide that. And you shouldn’t have to — but you do have to face it.
Everyone Has a Car. Not Everyone Has Their Car.
Finding a relationship is genuinely not that hard. Most people are in one. Most people have been in several. That part isn’t the achievement.
Think about cars. Most people own one. But what kind? Some people drive a car they don’t like because it was what they could get. Some drive something high maintenance that drains them. Some drive a second-hand situation they settled for because having something felt better than having nothing.
And then there are people with their actual dream car. The one they wanted. The one that fits. The one they genuinely can’t wait to get back to.
Most people are in relationships. Very few are in the relationship they actually want. And most of the time the difference has nothing to do with luck — it has to do with what they brought to the table and whether they were ready to maintain it.
A dream car you can’t maintain breaks down fast. A great relationship with someone who isn’t ready for it does the same thing. So stop pointing at the person who says “I’m a mess but someone loves me anyway” like that’s the goal. That’s a cheap car they’re telling themselves is enough. You want the real thing — do the real work.
The Captain America Rule
If you know Marvel, you know Steve Rogers was a skinny kid from Brooklyn who couldn’t even get into the army. But he was good. Genuinely, deeply good. That never changed — not when he got the serum, not when he became the most powerful soldier in the country, not ever. That’s why he could pick up the hammer. Because the goodness was never a phase.
I’m saying this because a lot of people do the work, become better, start getting noticed — and then forget who they were before all that. They were lonely once. Overlooked once. Needed once. And now they use people, because finally they can. Don’t be that person.
The whole point of becoming better is to become someone worth being with — not someone who weaponizes their growth against the people who show up for them.
Kindness isn’t a weakness you grew out of. It’s actually one of the hardest things to hold onto. Keep it.
Love Isn’t Something That Happens to You
There’s a version of this story a lot of people are living — waiting. Waiting to be found, waiting to be chosen, waiting for someone to look past all the rough edges and decide they’re worth it. And maybe that happens. Occasionally. Rarely.
But love isn’t a reward for patience. It’s not handed out to whoever waited the longest or suffered the most quietly. It finds people who are genuinely ready for it — people who are interesting, who are growing, who are honest, who are comfortable enough in themselves to make space for another person without falling apart.
“It’s hard to find love if you’re not lovable. And being lovable isn’t about being perfect — it’s about being real.”
That security guard — I think about him sometimes. I hope things changed for him. I really do. Because whatever he was missing, I don’t think it was kindness. Maybe it was confidence. Maybe it was self-worth. Maybe it was just the belief that he deserved to be in the room.
You deserve to be in the room. But you have to walk in like you do.
Become someone you’d want to meet. The rest follows.
