What Is Love?

Let me tell you a story…

When I was younger, I thought love would be hard to attain. It seemed very far out of reach. Thinking back I did not have any experiences with love… just embarrassing moments of being bullied, being ignored and wanting to be silent.

I desired to be a different person. I struggled with my identity, but I didn’t know how to be someone else.

I questioned my identity on many different levels. I felt like an alien in a foreign land. Nothing felt comfortable. Nothing felt like home. I experienced a lot of pressure and I didn’t understand where it was coming from. I did not stand out and I consistently felt ignored.

One of the girls from grade school was questioning me one day. She was like, “You like HIM?!” It was a girl I didn’t talk to very much, but she was judging me immediately based on something that she heard from someone else in regards to a boy I liked. She didn’t speak to me one on one to help me. She just made a judgment. I guess it was easier to alienate me because she already identified me as an outcast. Anything I did was going to be scrutinized! I was an easy target. I was done with everything.

I realized that the opinions of others do not matter. What matters is how I react and how I proceed forward.

I decided to just ignore people and stay to myself because whenever I got my hopes up, thought that I had made a friend or would be nice to someone, it seemed like all I got was suffering, pain and rejection.

I felt that I could not operate this way forever. If I wanted love, I had to learn to get close to people again. It was hard. I would feel hurt all over again when I had to mentally prepare myself to possibly experience rejection or hurt from not being accepted.

I learned that the more I learned about other people and allowed myself to open up and be close to them, the more I would learn life lessons from them. I learned lots because I listened. I practiced cultivating a space of non-judgment and it did help me to be more at peace. From here, I was able to show those around me that I cared by relating to others’ hardships and struggles. I found out that this is very important in a loving relationship and this was the basis for me being a good partner.

I would define love as a combination of feelings and actions that we experience in a balanced give and take pattern.

Thankfully, I was able to find my way from the darkness of a lack of experience and knowledge to a light of understanding and growth.