Acceptance is the only thought needed to eradicate the negativity that leads to psychological dark places like depression. Acceptance builds self-love, self-esteem and self-motivation. Girls who crushed on my friends, always used me to get to them. I never really had any courage to go for the ones that I always eyed.

The struggle of wanting to be a “dark club cool boy” has always been real in my high school years. I always felt the pressure to befriend the popular boys, regarded as the cool boys. Thing is, I always tried too hard to be cool and most of the time instead of staying frozen, I got burned.

In 2016, I started my high school at St Marks. I started my first day with the vibe of making my day the most memorable, and I managed to do that. But I never noticed that the girls I thought liked me in a romantic way actually saw me as a soul sister. How ridiculous! This is because of my personality. They have never met someone like myself in their lives and it was kind-of weird for them to be with a boy who talked as much as I did.

Life went on and we ended up making friends or walking away from those who we d friends but luckily, I made friends. My friends were the coolest in the school! The girls ranked them on their top five of the hottest guys in the school. This was something crazy! I couldn’t stop celebrating that I had actually made friends with such guys, who went to the gym, dated hot girls and had nice toned bodies, which I had always dreamt of. It was amazing.

Out of those friends, I was close with the biggest one; his name was Kay. Now that guy was my motivation when it came to both physical looks and charming talks. Haha! One day I told him about my crush on a girl named Louis. I didn’t really have the courage in me to approach her, hence why I asked for his intervention.

“Yo Kruz, go for the girl, man. Look, she’s smiling at you,” Kay said.

“C’mon Kay, stop lying man,”

“For real. Look to your left,” he said.

Oh my, gosh! He was actually telling the truth! My very own first high school crush was smiling at me. I waved at her and she waved back.

For the rest of that week, I was over the moon. I needed to make a move as Valentine’s Day was approaching and I didn’t have a date. Louis was my one and only hope. After the way she reacted to my wave, I had some motivation pumped up in me to speak to her. This was actually my first time asking a girl out and I didn’t know where to start but the greatest thing was that I had some motivation pumped up. I went up to her.

“Hey Louis, can we talk?” I asked.

“Hey Kruz. Sure, what’s up?” she asked.

“Will you please be my date to the dance?”
“Woah what? Me go out with you? Man, I don’t even think you can even be my type!” she said, laughing.

“But I thought you liked me too when you smiled back at me,” I said.

“That’s because you were with my biggest crush,” she said.

That was my cue. I was shattered.

How could she do that if she did not like me? I kept asking myself that question. Weeks went by and high school was no longer as fun as I had planned. I had already started to move on from what had happened to me. A day before the Valentine’s dance, I was watching TV at home and saw a Valentine’s Day advert and turned it around. I realised that I didn’t need any girl to feel loved, accepted, cool, man enough or perhaps, lovable because my uniqueness was my strongest point of me falling in love with myself.

I went to the dance alone and ended up being the happiest while other were getting dumped by their dates! I now love myself with all my imperfections. I needed to love myself because no one can ever love me for me.

Tell us: Do you believe that acceptance starts with self-love first?