"Stop looking for happiness in the same place you lost it"

I was 17 when I swapped my innocence for penetration. My happiness for your pleasure.

When I was 18, I swapped my insecurities for affirmations, my self loathing for self love. I was alone, and I remembered happiness.

And then I found what I thought was love, but I loved you and you hated me. Somehow I believed that love included me being miserable in an effort to make you love me back. And you filled me up, with lust and with seed, but never with love and never with happiness. And then you left and I was unhappy.

The cycled continued. If not with you, then with others. Until one day, I found love. I loved him and he loved me back, but still I was not happy. And I couldn't figure out why. For I wanted love, and pleasure, and penetration, but that didn't equal happiness.

"Stop looking for happiness in the same place you lost it"

In men.