My Promo-mentors writing challenge: Awwch,it hurts!

Hello great minds!
Welcome to my blog!
Last week I participated in the Promo-mentors writing challenge organized by @futurethinker. Since it's my daily routine to go through my feed,I stumbled on a post by @futurethinker 2 days ago and it showed that I was choosen as one of the winners for the last writing challenge and my reward has been sent to me. Since then,I have been feeling like I won a lottery visa...lol.

Well,this week's challenge has started,promo-mentors writing challenge is an initiative by @futurethinker to help new Steemians like us that have challenges with coming up with subjects to write about. If you would love to participate,you can check here for the details.

Today I would be sharing with you an experience that I have never shared and never thought I could share. It taught me a great deal and it changed my life because it made me change the way I see myself. I hope you enjoy and learn from it,its going to be a long read but I can say it would be worth your while.

My experience: Awwch,It hurts!
This experience am sharing with you happened 3 years ago. As at the time,I was a 3rd year student of University of Uyo,Nigeria.
I attended a conference the same year,in that conference,a guy walked up to me,he told me that I really had a nice hair on and he likes it. Wow! It was a nice complement,so I blushed and said "thank you". He was a very handsome guy,well groomed,properly dressed and had a very good oratory prowess,I just liked him immediately,I guess it was what some people call "love at first sight". So I wanted to keep in touch and somehow before the end of the conference we added each other on BBM chat since it was the days of BBM.

After the conference,we all left,I went back to Uyo,he went back to Umuahia. In my mind,I was glad we could always see,"afterall,Umuahia is barely 2 hours from Uyo",I said to myself. He tried to keep in touch on BBM,he would always inbox me to check on me,I really felt loved. This continued for like a month and we were getting to know each other better and any day we did not talk,I felt like something important has left me.

We continued as friends,one day he invited me to come and pay him a visit at Umuahia during the weekend,so I obliged. I prepared for the weekend and headed for Umuahia,I was going to be with someone I really loved,I was happy. We had a great weekend together and the best part of the weekend was that he told me that he loves me.After the weekend,I headed back to Uyo with all the smiles on my face and Joy in my heart,to me it was the best weekend in my 3rd year yet in the university. Upon my return to Uyo,we returned back to our chats and calls and things seemed normal and with each passing day,I just realised how much I was attracted to this guy even though he has not defined our relationship yet.Anyways, I had my hopes up that I had gotten myself a potential boy friend!

Suddenly!Like news flash,the direction of the wind changed. I hardly get chats from him and he stopped calling, I was worried,I taught I had done something wrong,so I called to ask and he said I had done nothing wrong. Each time I chat him up,it now took hours for him to reply compared to before when I get replies to my chats within a space of few minutes and when he finally replies, he would tell me that he was busy. It went on like this for the next two weeks,this action was driving me crazy because I was already head over heels in love with this guy! On few occasions when he replied my chat,I asked him what is happening with us,but he says nothing about it or he says something else. I kept on trying because I needed answers,but the worst happened,he stopped replying my chats at all. I kept on calling but he would not pick up my calls.

One faithful day,he finally picked up,he told me he had something to tell me and he requested that I come to Umuahia during the weekend,so we could talk and again I obliged. This time around it was the worst weekend yet in my 3rd year in the University because when we met,he told me that he does not love me enough to be in a relationship with me and we could only be casual friends! I asked him why?and he said "in life,you should not bother to look for the why behind others decisions because you would get hurt the more. I went back to Uyo heart broken,it was a painful experience,I was too hopeful and I lost the love I thought I had found and the most painful part was that he once said he loves me,but how the opposite became my reality is what I cant explain till today. Awwch,it hurts! I became a victim of unrequited love.

What I learnt from this experience:

Image source

1) Self love: The pain of rejection can be so frustrating,Immediately after this incident,I kept on asking myself if something was wrong with me but on the long run,I learnt that nothing beats self love, you cannot control how someone should feel about you but you can control all the love you can give to yourself. I also learnt that if he couldn't return my love,its not my fault. It taught me not to put my validation in other people's hand because the best kind of validation is self- validation.

2)Expectations: Jessica Inman once said "people don't hurt you expectations do". I learnt that I got hurt because I expected a relationship and that was something he could not give and I don't have a control over that. You can expect a lot from people but you may not be able to control or influence them to do your wish,So I learnt that to be on the safe side it's best to be myself,love people for whom they are and expect nothing in return!

3)Time heals: With how bad and hopeless I felt then,I never thought I could get over it. But with time,and seeing that I can happily share this experience now,that means I have gotten over it and am leaving my normal life. I have learnt that time heals and no matter the challenge you go through in life, just give it time and things will surely get better!

All thanks to @futurethinker for this opportunity to share another life changing experience of mine. Am glad I did this!