The Truth

The truth is: I have loved before, I love now, and I will love again.

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𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝓇𝓊𝓉𝒽 𝑜𝒻 𝓂𝓎 𝓅𝒶𝓈𝓉 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝒾𝓃𝑔

As a child, my experience of love was intense. I learnt to understand the complexities of love from an early age due to multiple factors. My parents weren't together, I had an absent and abusive parent, my parents went on to love new people, and I had multiple stepfamily members. The truth is that how I loved before led to my becoming passionate. I learnt how much my mum loved me when I was little, for she raised me by herself and fought for my voice and my rights until she had nothing left in her. She always treated me as though I were equal to her. We formed a friendship amidst our mother-daughter relationship, allowing me to expect from others the respect she expected us to harbour between us. It led me to expect goodness within my future loves. These expectations became the antithesis of what she disputed with my biological father: That it was unacceptable to belittle me, name-call me and leave me. Though I have my wounds from my love with him, the things my mum contested laid a foundation that allowed me to stand up for myself. She made me strong, even though at the same time, he made me weak.

Now I cannot love mildly; I love wholeheartedly and I love fiercely.

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𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝓇𝓊𝓉𝒽 𝑜𝒻 𝓂𝑒 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓃𝑜𝓌

If I am completely honest about what it is like for me to love now, I would fall apart writing this post, which I don't want to do because I feel as though I'm falling apart enough as it is. My relationship with myself is unkind at the best of times, and at the worst of times, it's just plain cruel. The truth of my loving now is that I'm being dishonest with more people than just myself about the total agony I am facing. I feel too deeply for my own good and certainly for the good of those around me. Every sweetness I feel is also bitter, tainted with the memory of everything love has taught me before. I am afraid to face this hole others have sunk me in because it's all around me. The darkness of it scares me. And dark it is so. It hurts me to love because of this fear. I am afraid loving will end the way it has ended once, or twice, before.

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𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝓇𝓊𝓉𝒽 𝑜𝒻 𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝓉 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝓂𝑒𝒶𝓃 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓂𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝒶𝑔𝒶𝒾𝓃

The idea of loving again, to me, is bittersweet. Whilst I want to, I feel trepidacious that it will end for me, the way loving has ended before... with an overwhelming underlayer of distrust. I think it's incredibly difficult to fall in love when you bear an inability to trust. In my experience, love and trust go hand in hand. The other truth is that I've become so very inextricably insecure that I wonder if I will self-sabotage relationships because I believe myself to be unlovable. I wonder, will I settle for less? Or, worse, will I even allow myself to settle for anything at all?

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The truth is that I dream of loving. Everything it has taught me, everything it has allowed me to feel, has been a learning experience that has shaped me. I wish to love again in the way the sun kisses my face in the morning, warming me entirely with its light, but I wonder, am I brave enough to face the wounds of my past?

Kisses & Hugs,

COS xo