My Thoughts About Love Post-Divorce
Lately I have asked myself if I have ever truly been in love. Love. It’s a word that people throw around but its varied meanings lie within the heart of every individual. Over the course of your life the definition will change according to your experiences and needs. It’s for certain that you will redefine what it means over and over again.
As a teenager the feelings of love are intense, exciting and confusing. But as we come into early adulthood some of that intensity subsides as we began to feel the sting of love. Yet it doesn’t stop us from chasing love again. We start to look at love objectively and how it will impact our lives for the good and the bad.
When I got married at the age of 27, I believed that I was truly in love. I should have realized that I didn’t know a lot about love because I was in unfamiliar territory. My childhood did not properly prepare me for love and relationships. So I came into marriage without having a clue. I was lost. Under those circumstances anything can look and feel like love.
It’s unfortunate but I came to believe that love was this messy, painful and agonizing thing. It was something that I tolerated because I didn’t know what else to do. When I ran out of excuses I knew it was time for me to make a change. In spite of it all I hoped that love would turn around. It never showed up in the form I had imagined for myself. At least I loved me enough to know when it was time to go.
The last five years have been the biggest lesson in love. When you tear down everything and start to rebuild your life, you learn to love yourself. You’re the last man standing but deserving of love. It was the first time that I took the opportunity to focus on self-love. It wasn’t easy. To love yourself requires you to wholly accept all that you are. You love yourself even with the flaws or it gives you motivation to make change. I believe that love will find you when you have healed from your past experiences. You are then ready to accept the invitation.
I know that I have loved. I have felt love from others who gave it to the best of their ability. Often times the capacity to love is altered by a single or series of events in a person’s life. I don’t believe that I have ever been in love. I’m not talking about the love you see in movies where people run to each other in a crowd. The kind of love that is real, consuming and amazingly powerful. It’s a force that drives you to become your better self and holds space for you to do that. There is no way I could have experienced that because I had never extended that type of love to myself until recently.
Love becomes a language that you not only speak but you are able to recognize from another. It’s symbiotic. It goes deeper than words. It’s an energy that flows directly from heart to heart. My hope is that we never give up on the expectation of true love. It would be amazingly beautiful to achieve that level of love at least once in my lifetime. I’m extremely hopeful.
Regina H.