idolization

we tend to put things on a pedestal, even if we don’t realize it. we hold onto these insufferable and unfulfilling objects, hoping that one day we can be content. no one would ever tell you this, so that’s why i am.

we take relationship statuses and clutch them so tightly to our chest, we brainwash ourselves into believing they’re important; who is single, who is taken, who is caught in the nasty middle, where they’re left staring at the ceiling every single night wondering what their label is. why have we become so obsessed with this mess of what love is now? why is it that we take all the idealizations we have in our heads, and hang them so high we crane our neck just to stare at them all day?

i’ll tell you why: because we are a generation of hopeless romantics. we have become so consumed with the idea of not just being in love with someone, but someone loving us right back that we would rather sacrifice our own mental and physical health to obtain it - even if it isn’t real love at all. i’ve experienced quite a few of those false loves. my mind instantly goes to one of the greatest lyricists of our time, Taylor Swift. her song “tolerate it” honestly strikes so many uneasy nerves in me as i relive the mental abuse i faced in my past.

“I wait by the door like i’m just a kid

use my best colors for your portrait

lay the table with the fancy sh*t

and watch you tolerate it…”

how true those words ring and echo in my heart. i put this idea of love that i had on a great big golden pedestal, i would do anything to achieve what i believed to be the perfect picture of love. i sacrificed myself to get it, thinking that’s what i was reaching for - only to be met with the beautiful heart at the top of that golden pedestal to be shattered and bruised. it was barely recognizable, is this what love is? to be told every week that if you weigh slightly more than the last, you’re at risk of losing the one person that consumes your thoughts every day? to be put on the backburner, like your thoughts and dreams don’t matter? to be told who you can be friends with - as if that’s something for anyone else’s mind to decide but your own?

the truth is, we all idolize the way our own love story plays out, thinking it’s natural. we look at our parents, our grandparents, our friends that are falling in love and we set them up on that pedestal as well, taking what glimmer of their lives we see and romanticizing it. “i want a love like yours.” no, you don’t. you don’t want a love like everyone else’s, because then, it wouldn’t be yours. you can’t have a beautiful love and it be mirrored after someone else’s life - that’s not love, that idolization. we need to quit idolizing romance around this idea of what we think everyone else is doing in their relationships.

instead, we need to let our hearts feel. we need to set standards for ourselves, created by ourselves - not created by a plethora of standards set by everyone else. we need to stop idolizing this false idea that we have of love. rather than creating the goal of a perfect relationship, we need to treat it as something that comes along as a reward in our lives - not something waiting at the end of the finish line.