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    Love Is Blind; Self-love Is Eye-opening

    By 09 Mins Read
    Image credit: Netflix

    Amber, aka A.D., stands at the altar, smiling and blushing as only a bride can, after reciting her vows, which are as sincere as a four-week courtship on a reality show called “Love Is Blind” will allow.

    Amber confidently beams as she says, “I do,” sure to be joined in a union of words and wedded bliss with her fiancé, whom she initially met through a wall less than two menstruations ago, Clayton, also known as Clay. Clay cheeses hard, seemingly pleased with her answer for more than just a long, soothing stroke to his ego. He takes a deep breath and starts with, “this has been the best process… A.D. I love you…I don’t think it’s responsible to say I do……but I want you to know that I’m rocking with you. I just don’t think it’s responsible for me to say I do, at this point, when I still need work.” Clay continues to talk about how unready he is, adding, “I appreciate you, and I know that you will fight for me,” as he holds Amber’s hands, it’s hard to wonder why she even has to fight, especially after such a public rejection.

    As Amber struggles to keep her tears as close to her eyes as possible, Clay is incredulous as to why the timing of them getting married matters, as if he is unaware of how this process works.

    In an attempt to spare herself any further embarrassment, she turns and motions to her bridal party, steps off the podium, hugs her would-be mother-in-law, and walks back down the aisle unarmed, followed by a precession of bridesmaids with dutiful yet somber support, that can only be rivaled by a funeral. Back in the same room, she happily prepared for this moment and she weeps, “I’m just never enough.” Moments later, the camera cuts to Clay saying he was not deeply in love with Amber. Later, Clay goes to console her.

    She repeats her sentiments of not feeling like she was enough over and over again, interjecting how she did her best and adding, “I feel kinda like a sacrifice.” Clay, the source of her agony, reassures her and consoles her by kissing her on the lips.

    I think the entire f*ck not. 

    My heart goes out to Amber because I have also felt that way, that no matter what I did, it was just not enough and that my best still was a failure. I, too, have carried many relationships; I, too, have raised more men than I will ever give birth to. In my early 20s, I was in a very abusive relationship. An 80s baby, I was raised to think that love involved some decent amount of struggle, though no one prepared me for the prince turning into a frog or that being a ride-or-die chick would involve near-death experiences. The more awful he was to me, the softer I became. This is not me comparing my ex to Clay at all, but rather myself to Amber. I had hoped that one day he would wake up and see the amazing woman who had survived so much for him and that it would eventually change his behavior. His behavior did change; it got worse.

    What I did not realize is that I was not leading by example with my kindness but instead rewarding his cruelty.

    He had no incentive to be good to me because the worse he was, the harder I tried. I had to learn that I could not love someone into being a better person. 

    As I age, the one self-taught lesson that has served me the greatest was removing myself from someone else’s maleficence. Asking, “why me?!” through tearful conversations with myself never brought me an answer. I had to realize that by asking that, I was asking for justification as to what someone else’s reasoning was for causing me harm, as if I deserved it. I had been all of the things and never enough at the same time; what was wrong with me? It’s funny that I was more concerned with finding out what was wrong with me rather than what was wrong with the person who harmed me.

    I had more mercy for him than for myself.

    I had to realize that it was simply me being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for far too long, and the only thing I could have done to stop them was to move out of the way because if not me, then it would have been someone else.  That same abusive ex has a long history of abusing women, including the woman who pulled him off me, the woman I felt I had to defeat in order to win his heart. I was really out here trying to win a loser* laughs.*. Anyway, needless to say, he was always abusive, and the “why me” was simply because I was available.

    Society grooms girls from a very young age to be brides. Disney sells us very early on, on the premise that we are to be rescued from our lonely, dark singlehood by a prince waiting to give us a better life. We are groomed to believe that we are only as good as the people with whom we share a last name and who come in and out of our vaginas and that self-love is not a valid form of love or happiness; that sh*t doesn’t count. If you are single (without children) you are romantic jetsam; you are single because you are unlovable, you must have done something wrong. Even worse, we are taught that a sh*tty man is still better than no man at all. So many women like Amber and myself have given time and time again to relationships that don’t give enough back. We have molded and folded ourselves into boxes for a man to check off, exhausting ourselves to be an image of perfection that should be picked.

    Look at me, I can cook, I can clean, I can f*ck, I can…endure.

    An extension of this school of thought is that a man will change for the right woman as if he wouldn’t want to change for himself. Imagine thinking that the superior sex wouldn’t think it prudent to be a better person without the interference of the weaker sex. Ain’t the man supposed to lead?! Their words, not mine. 

    The streets say that Clay and A.D. spent Thanksgiving together; I do not know. What I do know, is that if you sign up to be on a television show to get married, you better be ready for marriage. It is an absolutely sh*tty thing to sign yourself up for a process and not have processed yourself. Clay’s reasoning for leaving Amber at the altar was that he was not ready to be married, and while I very well could be wrong, it feels like a cop out, or at the very least a person who lacks emotional maturity. Throughout the show, leading up to the very moment that the couple met face-to-face at the altar, Clay bemoaned the possibility of turning into his father, a father who would often take him on his philandering adventures when he cheated on his mother, to whom he was married for almost two and a half decades. It is hard for me to believe that this revelation was new. If this were really a concern for Clay, it would have been a concern before he took the psych eval, pissed in the cup, and signed the contract to be on the show. He could have signed up for therapy to process his trauma but instead signed up to traumatize someone else. What A.D. did not understand is if that were true, if he were really frightened by his inability to be a good husband, then that had nothing to do with her. He may have even been more interested in someone else, but that does not mean he would have been better to her. P*ssies are not made out of vibranium, and no matter how hard you try, you will never be enough for someone who is not ready to be good enough for you. 

    The thing about self-love is there is so much peace in it.

    Men, even those with the lowest of bars, are still always good enough to be loved by somebody. This school of thought does not extend itself to women. Every day, I work on myself and realize that accountability equals self-actualization. One of my favorite mantras is, “if I can’t be bad, then I can’t be better.” If I cannot acknowledge where I need work, then I will never evolve, and not for someone else’s benefit, but for the benefit of myself.

    Romantic love is beautiful, but sometimes, that beauty dissolves. However, self-love has an amazing shelf-life. If you are not enough for the person who left you, are you at least enough for the person whom you are left with? My self-love story involves a decent amount of texts and phone calls from multiple past loves, lamenting how I was really good to them. I’m not sure if that validation is and was necessary; I don’t know. Their apologies are never written down or vocalized but always implied, no matter how explicit their former cruelty or negligence was. I spent too much time feeling just like A.D.: never enough for those same people who later came back to praise my work *laughs.*

    Additionally, the greatest gift self-love has given me, is a better ability to spot someone who could never love me enough. 

    Kyla Jenée Lacey is an accomplished third-person bio composer. Her spoken word has garnered tens of millions of views, and has been showcased on Pop Sugar, Write About Now, Buzzfeed, Harper’s Bizarre, Diet Prada, featured on the Tamron Hall show, and Laura Ingraham from Fox News called her work, “Anti-racist propaganda.”. She has performed spoken word at over 300 colleges in over 40 states. Kyla has been a finalist in the largest regional poetry slam in the country, no less than five times, and was nominated as Campus Activities Magazine Female Performer of the Year. Her work has been acknowledged by several Grammy-winning artists. Her poetry has been viewed over 50 million times and even used on protest billboards in multiple countries. She has written for large publications such as The Huffington Post, BET.com, and the Root Magazine and is the author of "Hickory Dickory Dock, I Do Not Want Your C*ck!!!," a book of tongue-in-cheek poems, about patriarchy....for manchildren.

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