I started feeling lovable when I stopped caring so much about being loved. When I accepted that I would always be kind of a weirdo, jagged around the edges, occasionally prone to saying the wrong thing, insecure at inconvenient times. When I let go of my preoccupation with myself I was able to focus on other people, to start to see them. Paying attention to people is what really makes someone lovable. But not paying attention through the lens of obsessively analyzing how they’re responding to you—paying attention to who they actually are. Forget yourself for a moment and see how that feels. Stop calibrating other people’s responses and measuring the hours between messages. Tell yourself: it’s okay if I’m too much, too little, not right, misunderstood. Maybe it doesn’t matter as much as I think it does. Accept the hunger within you, the ever-present black hole. When you do that, you’ll start to see other people more clearly. The world will feel more neutral, less hostile.