Accepting Love is Hard Sometimes

Growing up we're all like - ohemgee being loved is the greatest! Especially little girls like me spoon-fed Disney Princess fairy tales in the 90's and 80's rom-coms and 60's Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals. Being in love looked like it was the shit. It didn't help that in most of these fantasies being in love usually accompanied a swift marriage and an inherited fortune. Being in love was the bomb. It was like winning the life lottery, the emotions lottery AND the lottery lottery. Love was lit.


Now I'm turning thirty one in a week or two and I have some thoughts. Love is pretty cool but it can also be damaging as hell. Loving the wrong person at the wrong time can get you into some serious shit. Sometimes it can work out but it takes a lot of (well) work, introspection and time to untangle the knots of whatever it is that composes the wrongness of said relationship. Sometimes it takes just as much effort to realize that things aren't going to sort themselves out and it's time to move onto the next life lesson.


Then there are the people that come into your life and they break you. They take your very existence and snap it over their knee like a kindling twig. CRACK! And forever after that love is weirdly synonymous with Disney animal talking companions, heart-rending affection and massive, massive amounts of emotional pain. Your brain gets jumbled. The path to love has a big ole firewall on it and you can't remember the password to access what it feels like anymore. I mean what love really feels like --- that unabashed, vulnerable, fearless kind of affection you can only have before someone tosses your heart in the blender and turns that shit to eleven.


When this kind of thing happens (and it happens to almost all of us in some form or fashion) it becomes far easier to accept the fact that people will hurt, use and lie to us than to accept that they will love us in a healthy way. We start to doubt our own judgement and decision making abilities. Even when someone is affectionate (be it partner, auntie or bestie) we tentatively accept their gentleness with a tentative side-eye and a shaky, uncertain smile. What does this person want? What are they going to DO to us?


The most nefarious phase of the "accepting love degradation process" is when it effects are self-love, worth, confidence bits. I know in my own head the inner dialogue often goes something like ---


"Well, you dated that one guy for five years despite him being completely abusive so how do you really know if this person is safe for (friendship, romance, collaboration, etc)?"


"Look can you just trust me on this one? I've thought about this A LOT and I'm pretty sure..."


"Yeah, well you were pretty sure about abusive five year guy too weren'tcha?"

"Okay, Me. Well, when you put it that way ..."


The damage others do to us becomes truly nightmarish when they exit our lives and we pick up where they left off --- doing the damage they'd still be doing to us on their behalf. It becomes easier to accept varying executions of the same destructive behaviors from whoever we meet. We hurt ourselves, let others hurt us and then wonder in bafflement, "Why ME?" Unable to step outside the cycle and realize that we're the ones proliferating the harm by forgetting our worth or never rebuilding it. When we get rid of someone only to carry on their destructive habits in their stead it diminishes the impact getting rid of them has on our lives.


The product of love can be a beautiful boost in confidence, security, camaraderie and happiness but the product of love can also be a tumorous life lesson that can destroy us if not located and extracted. But we don't see that side of it in Disney films. The best our childhoods can do is imbue us with an wavering sense of self-worth and empathy to prepare us for these sorts of encounters before we're unleashed as adults unto the world.


I want you to take away a few things from this article and I'll tell you what they are.


--- We need to find a real world way to prepare children for the hazards of romance instead of depicting a one sided version of the pursuit of marriage
--- Sometimes we have to take accountability for hurting ourselves because we haven't recovered from damage taken upon the battlefield of life
--- It's okay to consciously, in the present, open your hands to accept love and sometimes as an adult that is very rare and difficult thing to do


Love is not always an instant, youthful, freeing experience that comes rushing through the flood gates and into the dawn of our adult lives, teeming into our souls to rid us of sadness FOREVER. Okay, I'm gonna be honest it's never that way. More often, it takes work to build those gates and cautiously open them and that's okay --- just don't let them stay closed for too long. Regardless, there will still be times you are less than happy. Love is not the antidote to melancholy and poverty as depicted in aforementioned fables. (But I'm guessing you already know that.)


Self love and care is not always easy to generate or access even though the media will depict it as bubble bath and shopping sessions. It's not always easy to craft love for yourself without packaging it in hesitant disdain or fear. Sometimes people have to deconstruct an entire scaffolding of uncertainty and stonewalls bricked in fear to access their own self-worth. That's okay.


Happiness is fickle and sadness is fleeting but love is sustainable. I hope that today and every day we can take down those barricades of fear block by block and use all of those materials that life has given us to build a place for love to incubate. I hope that for you and I hope that for me.


Now go kickass.


-Rue