To be honest, a large part of me had never thought that this day would come. I can honestly say that I am engaged to the most wonderful person I have had the pleasure of getting to know.

I’ve spent much of my life feeling detached and inferior to those around me, unworthy of occupying the same space and time. It’s taken me quite a few years, but for the last three or so I’ve been feeling more like a person. I wouldn’t call what I was before that an actual person, since that requires some sense of equality with other moral thinking beings, and I certainly wasn’t feeling equal to anyone.

Sometimes I find myself reverting to that former thought pattern, but the funny thing is that I have grown enough since then to be able to dismiss those thoughts for what they are: fleeting doubts. It does nothing for my self-worth to encourage the belief that I am not worthy of things that other people have.

Even writing this is a bit of a regression, though a parting one. I do not want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I should have the things I do. I do not mean this in any materialistic way. Those things don’t matter. But personal relationships do.

I am very much deserving of having friends, a husband, a family. These things are not something that can belong only to the privileged few. They are mine, or can be mine. I have plenty of family. For all the grief they cause, sometimes I wish I didn’t, but at the same time my life would be pretty empty without them.

Something I learned as a child always comes back to me when thinking about this. The only reason why I am bothered so much by my family is because I care about them. I really do. They don’t need to be around, or talk to me much, or care what I do even. Just knowing they are in bad situations or doing stupid things makes me frustrated or angry because I do care what happens to these people. I love them or I would be indifferent to their situations.

With that out of the way, I am starting to realize that finding the love of my life and knowing that he loves me just as much as I love him, that he wants to be with me for the rest of our lives, this is something I can allow myself to have and cherish. I look forward to waking every day because of the prospect of being with him. No matter how bad things seem they can always be dealt with. The knowledge that someone supports me and is with me in such things makes life so much better.

To be honest, I always expected to spend my life alone. Partially because I thought I didn’t deserve to be with anyone else, but also because I believed that no one would want to be with me. After accepting this, I decided that the only person I had to live for was myself.

This is important, because it was this belief of being alone, of only having myself to depend on, which actually enabled me to begin trusting myself, and acquiring the strength to continue on my own. I would not be here today without this.

I understand that this is rambling all over the place, but basically I am trying to explain how that lost and lonely person became able to become the one I am today.