When you realise that you are your only GUARANTEE

When you realise that you are your only GUARANTEE in this life

That everything is a variable and you are the constant

You find that there’s no other choice but to rely on yourself

More so than ever if you are poor, queer, trans, from a broken family

Black, from the ghetto, extremely neglected by your parents

You learn to cheer for yourself, become a cheerleader for self

Learning about yourself as if you were dating yourself

Giving yourself attention and affording yourself understanding.

You notice your best option is to love yourself, accept yourself

Respect yourself, protect yourself, parent yourself, befriend yourself

Discipline yourself, reinvent yourself if the need arises

Exercise kindness towards self and be polite with self

You start esteeming yourself, confiding to yourself and building more confidence in yourself

You worship, adore, admire, love and honour yourself

Being loving to self through actions towards self, words about self, 

Decisions take for self and thoughts about self

Your life becomes very personalised

Subjective and real, at least with respect to you

You live for yourself, by yourself, in yourself

Your experience becomes validated and legitimised by yourself

You start feeling appreciated and valued by you

You become the producer, distributor and consumer of your own story

Owning every piece of it: the good, the bad and the ugly

Choose whomever, whenever and whatever to share

You become a fully realised agent, able to actualise self

This is before others come and join you in your beautiful house

Then you share this world with them and allow them to share theirs with you

Indeed two beautiful worlds are better than one

However two terrifying worlds are far worse off than one

So this realisation of self-love become a guarantee of being well-off

By yourself or in a relationship

Therefore invest in yourself, bet on yourself and believe in yourself