Love is ALL grey and there is not a damn thing I can do about that. I have had to find a way to coexist with its many varieties and contradictions and weaknesses and I have not liked it very much. Love is so intrinsic to my existence and yet it has caused me so much joy and agony. I am scared of both agony and joy because agony is just the worst and joy holds the greatest of potential of taking you straight to agony. It feels like a lose/lose for a pessimist such as myself. In my life experiences, all roads end in some form of hurt and it is a choice I have to make on how to proceed from that pain. Based on my personal awareness of just about everything last thing that I do or say or think or think about thinking endlessly, I have been sorting out love and my place within it. I have concluded that how I work is that once I have truly loved an individual, I will love them always and forever even when I wish I could cut and slash and create a black hole to consume and take it away forever. I will always love someone once that damn line has been crossed and that love may transform or become covered in scars or shift into a different kind of love, or even find hate as a companion, but my heart has a memory that my brain is totally jealous of.
The catch, of course, is that once someone I have loved does something out-rightly to harm me or someone I am just as equally in love with as them, I feel shattered. I take it down to the core and I can't ever undo the way that felt and I can't forget it and every single time I see that person, I feel it all over again even if I have forgiven them. You see, forgiveness and forgetting are different universes that do not meet or touch one another within me. Forgiving someone releases me of the burden of actively carrying anger or seeking justice, forgetting is something I am not capable of. In fact, I have no memories up to about age 5 in kindergarten, but my heart has communicated feelings of terror and fear and anger I cannot place upon any specific memory before that age. But you best know that whatever happened before I can remember shaped me into who I am now.
I have lost so many people I love. I have walked away from people I love. They have walked away from me. None of that goes unnoticed by my heart and it reminds me intermittently each day of what I have lost and what I have gained. My aching heart is scared of loving new people because it has grown wary of pain and it knows love is the key in. Once I love, the person has the potential to wreck havoc upon me without prejudice and, at this point, very few people have not taken that liberty. I know it is my own fault. I let people use me. I am willing to be as loving, giving, supportive, and accommodating as possible to show them how much I care while thinking of my own needs as a burden upon them. Until recently, I have let it slide when the other person would happily take and take and take and only give enough as to not inconvenience themselves for my sake.
I am in a place in my life where I need to envelope myself with love and surround myself with people who love me as I am and not because of what they can get out of me or take from me. My heart and soul need reprieve from diminished worth and practically throwing support at others hoping for at least a little love back. I want people around me that say "I love you" and it mean "I love you the way you love me because you are you". Those people are welcome in and the rest need to move along to take from someone else. My needy days are over. My worth is here to stay.
