Love is complicated, an unspoken universal truth.
We are, at the core, terrified of the unknown, of ourselves. Love doesn’t heal that. Love is, some–if not most of the time–the unknown. You do not choose who you love. You certainly have the possibility of falling in love with someone unreachable, unattainable, or simply unavailable. Out of control, out of bounds.
For a very long time, that knowledge did not sit well with me or my insane need to control everything, to be in power of myself and my own fate, a rebellious tendency of the wrong sort. A fairytale romance is not to be my end, thank you very much. I decide who I love. If I can love, if I have someone to love, it’s going to be fine. I want to love someone of my own choice, and I will stop at nothing, I will sacrifice all, because love is a choice. If you can’t love someone, you’re a coward, you’re not doing enough, you’re wrong.
My defiance of love then, or the system, came from a sense of recklessness. I forced myself to love the wrong people, to be with the wrong people, and to not speak a word to anyone of how miserable I was. Even if I was with the wrong person, I was with someone, I told myself. It’s better than being broken, alone, and not whole, not complete with another half in a society that puts marriage as an institution of our livelihood. It’s better than not being loved. Hell, I didn’t want to be a crazy cat (and dog) lady. I will make it work.
Loving the wrong person is not your fault. But choosing to stay with the wrong person and putting yourself in any sort of harm for it is the ultimate demise of your sanity, of your soul.
For a very long time, I believed that with love, everything is possible. He loves me, well, he pushed me and called me a whore when he was in the wrong state of mind, oh I love him more now, so it is possible for him to change. She wants to spend the rest of her life with me, and she promised it was a one-time thing, I love her so much, she will change for me. Right?
Maybe. Maybe they can. Maybe they are willing to change, but maybe they aren’t. Who knows? You shouldn’t have to know. You should have gotten the hell out of there.
For a very long time, I couldn’t.
I should have.
The only person you need to love is yourself. You may not want to, but you need to. You are the only one who is there 24/7 to pick up the pieces of yourself that are torn off. Romance is not a means of salvation for your suffering. Romance is a luxury, a benefit of loving yourself. You do not need romance to survive.
I am not saying romance is dead. I love, I love, I love. I believe in true love, in soulmates, still, despite it all. I am with my true love. My true love is a person who makes me want to believe in the betterment of self, that I can always reach for more without feeling guilty, a person who’d never drown me down if they were to be in anyway beneath me. My true love and I plan a future where we will be proud (crazy) parents’ of 2,500 dogs on a dog farm with 1,000 cats to roam about our small house. I am happy because I’d never let anyone in that wouldn’t give me best of what I deserve.
Never let anyone give you less of what you deserve. Give yourself what you deserve.