Does your greatest love always come from someone else?

Like many other kids born in the 90s, I grew up binge watching Disney movies.

And while I hold the memories of the films  with great fondness, I learned the hard way that the illusion of a prince rescuing me was one that is complete fiction.

Let me clarify that I am not cynical about romantic love. I am married to a wonderful man who is my partner through every step, but that unconditional and miraculous love? I actually got it from someone else.

I was 16 years old when I started dating. As clichés go, it was a messy whirlwind of a relationship that I thought would end up in a marriage. We were toxic towards each other and too young to see it, but at the time, atleast for a short period of time, I thought he would be my greatest love. He wasn’t even close.

I’ve dated many people since then, many of whom I thought of as my greatest loves, even the ones that weren’t good for me. Still I thought many of them were it. They weren’t even close.

By the time I moved to India 6 years ago, I had an epiphany. Does your greatest love have to come from a romantic relationship?

For context, I left my American roots to become the sole caretaker of my grandfather, who was mastering the last stage of his life, but just needed a little bit of help and mostly just a lot of company. Doing that for him shifted my entire perspective— he was and is the love of my life.

So you’d think this was it right? This was my greatest love?

Not quite.

To be honest it came pretty close. But eventually, he passed away.

I still grieve but I would be dishonoring his legacy if I didn’t move forward. It wouldn’t be fair to burden him with being my greatest love. Even if I want him to be.

So I stopped searching. And it made me uncomfortable. I love my husband, but by now I was wise enough to know that just the romance, the companionship, the partnership, wasn’t going to fill that missing piece for me.

And I got so uncomfortable that I needed therapy.

I was on the verge of giving up. And that’s when I found my answer.

By healing my relationship with me, I learned that my greatest love has been within me all along. It was never supposed to come from someone else.

I learned so many things about myself– that I am honest, loving, beautiful and incredibly resilient. Basically I’m pretty awesome.

I learned that my greatest love will always come from ME. I just took the long route to learn that I’ve been living the Disney fairy tale with my love,little ol’ me, all along.