You can’t depend on anyone else; you can only depend on yourself.

Throughout my life I have found that the only person you can truly rely on is yourself. Family, friends, relationship partners, they will all let you down at some point. There have been many moments in my life in which I depended on someone for something and they failed me.

Those who know me know that in April 2015 I started dating a guy who made me really happy. Every moment I spent with him I felt accepted and loved. We would sit up every night and talk for hours until we could no longer keep our eyes open. We gave each other advice on every situation and always comforted each other when it was needed. In October 2016 we were discussing marriage and moving in together after graduation. I began working on wedding plans, drawing up blueprints for a house, and looking into real estate and school systems to see where we might want to start our lives. However, he never offered any help with these things; I was all alone.

In December 2016 we broke up because of his unacceptance of my Christian faith and his lack of involvement in my life. This proved to me that I could not rely on anyone to make a difference in my life other than myself. I realized that no one could ever love me more than my God could and as long as I had Him in my life everything would be okay.

Another instance in my life that proved I could not rely on others was my grandfather’s death in June 2015. During the time he was in the hospital until his death, my grandmother depended on me to take care of her and my parents depended on me to take care of her and her house.

When they asked me if I could do it, I really had no choice because I knew they needed me to do it. My sister depended on me to help her with her homework and the cats depended on me for food. I was also balancing my own school work and martial arts training at the time.

It was a lot of stress and responsibility for me when I wasn’t even 16 years old at the time. I handled the stresses well, though, and we got through that difficult time. After my grandfather’s death I had many people tell me at the funeral that I had to be the strong one in the family for everyone else to lean on. I had to take care of my family the way my grandfather did.

I grew up pretty fast in those months as we searched for a house that we could move my grandmother into with us and went through all of my grandfather’s stuff. I never got to really express how anything made me feel though because everyone depended on me to be the rock in the group, the steady one that made progress while everyone else mourned and slowly continued with life. I quickly realized that the relationships were very one sided and I couldn’t depend on anyone the way they depended on me.

I learned to rely on myself and that has made me the extremely independent person I am now. The more you depend on other people, the more burden you put on them. I rely on myself and my God so that others can depend on me.