Unrequited _ 03.20.20
How do you feel when you love someone who does not love you back? What is love?
Love is an interesting concept and one we continue to define as we age.
When I was younger, I unconsciously sought love from others without understanding what it was, got flustered in trying to understand when things didn’t fall into place, and wondered ‘who will I truly love or who will love me?’ when the fantasies in my head didn’t quite work out.
I’m pretty sure I got the misconstrued conception of what love was from my parents, as many of us do. I grew up in a very traditional household watching Mom cater hand and neck to Dad. Mom had been told her whole life her role was to understand how to take care of a man — cook, clean, care. It was what she was brought up on and all she knew. When she met my dad on her wedding day (yes, they were arranged by their families), she thought that was love.
It was a shocker to both her and myself as the eldest daughter when they separated in my teen years, a tear in the family that didn’t quite stitch itself back to normal. Dad wanted an independent woman. Mom wanted to be truly loved. Go figure. That break was the first heartbreak I ever felt.
As I grew up, I was surrounded by friends who had partners. And I was that single friend they went to when things fell apart. I listened, watched, and saw how love entangled everyone in heartbreak and mess. I loved being a friend, however, hearing of the heartache kind of traumatized me so, that I buried myself in schoolwork to avoid thinking about a partner, merely the avoidance (fear) of feeling that pain along with young-girl insecurities.
I stumbled into my adult years without actually experimenting with what the taste of love was. Even lust. I felt like a child in my early twenties kept out of the exclusive love club, still asking questions on what the experience was like, yet still going along with the idea that ‘I didn’t need a boyfriend’, or ‘single life forever!’ And through college, I had learned the hard way, dating casually still learning and growing in my feels, and many times, getting my heart stomped on from those who just. didn’t. care and were not worth my time. They didn’t know my experience.
Those years I kept coming home in tears when shit didn’t work out, I criticized myself hard for the growing pains of love. The un-knowing of what it took to love. The naivety. However, it was still nothing compared to the pain of when my Dad broke my heart years prior.
Today, I am in a committed relationship, one that unexpectantly came in my mid-twenties and I finally felt it... love. A two-way street. No bullshit. A knowing. I was struck. If I could describe my first trip falling in love with my man, it felt like I tripped and instead of hitting the pavement, I fell into an open sky abyss filled with stars, light, and joy. I kept falling and engulfed myself in two years of flying. And the third year hit, and we began to realize love was not what we thought it was. I discovered how alike I was to my Mom, something I had no idea I was like! I began steps to unwind that. And he discovered what it truly took to continue to grow, with or without. This year of realization was the roughest thus far and one we took with patience.
I learned that love was a giving. An internal giving, a sacrifice that required 100% empathy, a clear-cut package of compassion, clear communication, and care that needed to be nurtured. Love is a journey.
And most of all, love was something you earned. True love comes from within the work of loving yourself first before thinking you could love and give wholeheartedly to someone else.
