Thank you all for your kind responses.

I believe everything you say, but it’s so hard to put loving yourself into practice after many years of rejection from others and all the messages from the media about the importance of beauty through being slim, well-dressed and made up like a model.

I don’t want to give up but I don’t know how to change any of it. Some people tell you to look for love, others say it will come when you least expect it. It is the one thing in my life I can’t work on as it’s so fated and this is what frustrates me as everything else in my life I’ve achieved I’ve worked hard at to do so – getting grades, working late…there is no being the best at love. It seems like such chance.

I often say to my friends that if I knew I would find love in the future, I wouldn’t worry about it now. If I knew I wasn’t going to find it, I would accept it and move on with my life. Instead I am in Limbo, wondering what to do and lacking security in my life.

I think this is bigger than love, it’s wanting to feel like I belong somewhere and I won’t struggle through life alone.