When Love Isn’t The Enemy

There is a strange kind of grief that comes with being loved well after you’ve spent years being loved poorly.

No one really tells you about that part.

They tell you that one day you’ll meet someone who is patient. Someone who is kind. Someone who doesn’t make you question your worth.

They don’t tell you that when you finally do, your first instinct might be to flinch because your body remembers what your heart is trying to forget.

Someone tells you you’re beautiful, and instead of saying “thank you,” you argue. Not because you think they’re lying, but because somewhere along the way you learned compliments were either manipulation or temporary.

Someone tells you you’re worthy, and your mind quietly replies, Until you disappoint them.

Someone says, “I love you,” and without even realizing it, you add two invisible words to the end.

For now.

The heartbreaking part is that they never said those words.

You did.

Your past did.

Your fear did.

Sometimes we don’t realize we’re asking good people to pay debts they never owed. We hand them invoices written by people they’ve never met.

Prove you’re different.

Prove you won’t leave.

Prove this isn’t temporary.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Then one day it hits you.

The person standing in front of you isn’t trying to repair what they broke. They’re trying to rebuild what someone else destroyed.

That’s a heavy thing to ask of someone who only ever wanted to love you.

Healing isn’t only about learning to love yourself. Sometimes healing is allowing someone else’s love to arrive without arguing with it.

Maybe believing them when they call you beautiful.

Maybe accepting that you’re worthy because they’ve shown you, consistently, that they believe you are.

Maybe hearing “I love you” without quietly translating it into “until.”

Trust isn’t built in one grand gesture. Sometimes it’s built in the smallest moments imaginable—the ones where you stop correcting someone who loves you and simply let yourself be loved.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somewhere between the fear and the certainty, I realized something.

I had been treating one person like they were everyone else.

That wasn’t fair.

So today, I’m making a different choice.

When someone who has earned my trust tells me I’m beautiful, I’ll believe them.

When they tell me I’m worthy, I’ll stop arguing.

When they tell me they love me, I’ll stop adding words they never said.

Not because the fear is completely gone, but because love deserves the chance to speak louder than it.

I think that’s what healing looks like.

Not becoming fearless.

Just becoming willing to believe that not everyone is trying to hurt you, and when you finally meet someone who isn’t…

Let them love you.

Stay Weird. Love You. Mean It.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash