whatever you seek from the world can only be found in you.

There were nights when I stood beneath a sky so crowded with stars that I found myself praying even though I wasn’t religious. It seemed like the most naturally human thing to do when confronted with that level of beauty. I prayed —  to whichever deities residing in the stars, to whatever entities listening from the dark — for love, for success and abundance, for an exciting life that’s also peaceful.

And sometimes, life would be kind enough to answer. It would lead me to meet my husband in Australia. It would offer me opportunities that randomly fall into my lap. Bless me with amazing friends and supportive family.

By all visible measures, I had been given much of what I once asked the stars for.

So why, even now, does some part of me still feel unfulfilled?

Why, after receiving so much, do I still carry the shameful suspicion that something is missing?

For a long time, I mistook that feeling for greed, ungratefulness, and an insatiable hunger for more when life had already been so generous.

Hadn’t I asked for love and received it?

Hadn’t I wished for abundance and now live in it?

Hadn’t I been granted everything I craved for?

But lately I have begun to wonder if that emptiness is simply the consequence of asking the world to provide what I have never learned to create within myself.

I have spent much of my life looking outward.

I looked for love from the world, from other people, yet I never learned how to create that love from within. I look in the mirror and see only deficiencies, recommendations for improvement — always a project that must be monitored and fixed, never a person who deserves respect.

I craved validation, obsessively replaying old scenes of praise, of teachers patting my head, of friends offering compliments – moments in which I had proof to see myself as good, worthy, enough. And still, I could not produce a single kind sentence about myself without feeling fraudulent.

Everything I asked for, I received. But all is meaningless if I can’t create the same for myself. And perhaps that’s the real tragedy.

Hi, I’m Janelle☆ Whoever you are, I hope today has been kind to you.

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