While I Relearn How To Love, All I Ask For Is Patience
I don't have to be anything other than what I am in order to deserve love.
Antonio Guillem / Shutterstock By Sarah Dowell
There are some days I feel as if I can be the most loving person alive. Other days, I feel like I don’t know how to love.
I subconsciously push people away from me. It may sound melodramatic to some, but after having my heart broken on both romantic and friendship levels, I need to relearn how to love.
In the past, I’ve come across people I swore would be in my life forever. I knew they were endgame for me. They would matter to me more than I could ever expect.
I didn’t know they would be a temporary piece in my life.
Even these temporary pieces made a huge impact on me. They taught me things I didn’t even know about myself.
Unfortunately, they also taught me things I didn’t want to know about myself — I’m too trusting, too forgiving, and too easy to manipulate sometimes.
I would never call myself naive, but I wanted to see the good in all of them.
It wasn’t worth it. Now, I feel like people are having trouble trying to see the good in me. It’s hard to let them know that I just need to teach myself how to be the person I was when they first met me.
I don’t know how to be the person I was then. My personality and my heart have become more closed off, more jaded.
It’s not that I don’t want to love people or that I don’t want relationships. It’s that I don’t know how to start this over.
Building something from the ground up seems impossible. It takes patience, and many people don’t have the kind of patience it would take to wait for me to pull it all back together.
They don’t have the same type of energy or ability it takes to see me build everything again. I’m not letting them in to help me, so they’re watching from the sidelines.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but please stay patient while I relearn how to love.
I want to love you, I want to love my friends, I want to be the same person I was before. That’s never going to be an option, but I can get as close as possible.
After a breakup or a toxic friendship, it seems like you’re never going to love someone the way you did before. There was a lot of love put into those people. They threw it away, and it can leave you with feelings of helplessness, worthlessness, and lack of motivation to try again.
If it was so easy for someone you cared so much about to throw your love in the trash, then what’s it worth?
It’s worth so much more than you think.
Your love, to the right people, is worth more than all the money in the world, and it’s worth more love than anyone else’s.
We all appreciate being loved, but there’s nothing like being in love with the right person, or the warmth of a loving hug from the right friend. It’s the person you’re receiving the love from that makes all the difference.
You may not know it yet, but you are that person to someone.
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I’m relearning how to love after watching friends walk out of my life.
I’ve seen myself taken advantage of more times than I’m willing to admit. Being put in situations I didn’t want to be in, I still showed love to those friends. They left anyway.
It was destructive, and I realized I was destroying myself.
Now, I’ve grown. I know I’m worth so much more than I’ve ever let on, and I didn’t have to be anything other than what I am in order to deserve love.
I’m relearning how to love, not because I didn’t know how to, not because I can’t love strongly enough, but because I want to love in a way that’s safe for myself.
It’s easy to become so enthralled in someone else that you lose track of yourself. So while I’m relearning how to love myself and others, I need patience.
I’ll still be here, and I’ll still care. The love isn’t gone, but I’m going to take care of myself and show myself how to love easily and freely.
One day soon, I’ll be more carefree, more open, and let people in again. Until then, grant me the patience that I’ve granted others, and let me learn how to love myself again, as much as I deserve to.
Sarah Dowell is a writer whose work has appeared on Unwritten, YourTango, and Thought Catalog. She's passionate writing about helping people love themselves and finding true happiness.