My Problem with Love

Ever since I can remember I’ve chased love like it was the be-all and end-all of my existence. I never watched romantic movies when I was little, didn’t read any romance novels, didn’t care for sad songs (although my absolute favorite song when I was really little was a pretty sad one, but it didn’t register as such), so I can’t say that pop culture has influenced me to be this way. I was simply born to love and grew to need it to survive thrive. However, come to think of it, I did see Titanic at the movie theater when I was seven (my favorite romantic movie of all time, I’ve seen it countless times) and I think that might have been the first time I ever cried watching a movie. I remember tearfully asking my parents why she let him go, “she said she’d never let go, why’d she let him go,” and maybe it left such an impression on me that I’ve grown to seek someone who will never let me go. Maybe, I don’t know.

The point is, for most of my life, love has been the most important thing to me, to a point where I think my relationship with love might be toxic. I can’t say for certain that it’s brought me more happiness than pain, yet I still crave it. You tell me.

My problem with love is that I’ve always seen it as the most beautiful thing that life has to offer. The most beautiful and as vital as anything else. That’s why whenever love stumbles, the sky comes falling down on me. Sometimes the ground might give way, too. It’s really nice, just fantastic.

When love stumbles, I fall. Hard. The most painful and utterly excruciating experiences in my life were centered around love. I have been genuinely traumatized by them in ways that have taken me years – and will likely continue to take me years – to overcome them. Not be healed, mind you, just live with them in a way that they don’t negatively influence my life anymore. It’s a real struggle. I know you might be thinking how juvenile of me to get so overwhelmed by something as trivial as love and heartbreak, and to that I say *PHHHBBT*. But really, go back to where I was saying just how important love has been to me my whole life. It is literally the thing I crave most in life and it has many times led me to feel like my life was over (I’m dumb like that).

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my pain, it’s that I should never judge someone else’s. Each of us are different, and in much the same way some of us get overenthusiastic about their stamp collections while others could literally not care any less about stamps, some of us get excessively hurt by things that others might find trivial. But pain is never trivial to those who suffer it, and it is why I never ever judge other people based on their cause of suffering (or sexual desires, but that’s a whole other conversation). My biggest cause of suffering, the thing that has consistently brought me the most pain and made me think the darkest of thoughts has been love. Heartbreak. I’m almost thirty *shudders* so I’m pretty sure this thing I have for love won’t significantly change too much too soon. Woo.

I crave affection and I crave offering affection just as much. So when something gets in the way of that, I’m on red alert. My main goal and the most important thing to me becomes removing any hurdle currently in the way of me receiving and giving love. When I have someone’s love and that love stumbles, the fear of losing it often becomes unbearable. Debilitating. I get a lot of dark thoughts, I become overwhelmed by guilt, pessimism, and anxiety, and I feel completely hopeless and undeserving of that love. It’s a lot of fun. Then I reach my absolute lowest point and in a last-ditch attempt to save me, my mind breaks under the pressure. I get angry. I get angry and that anger pulls me up and saves me. Until next time. But this can take weeks or months of pain (and thankfully accelerated weight loss), depending on how hard I fall. It’s something I’ve been observing over the years.

Though probably unhealthy, I almost never talk to people about this. Not family, not friends, not anyone. Despite the fact that I’m currently writing all this with the intention to publish it, I don’t really feel comfortable with people knowing how fragile and messed up I am. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. I don’t want anyone’s pity. I struggle by myself, I always have. But maybe not anymore. I’m doing something about it now. I took the first step today, actually. Something I should have done many years ago. Hopefully it’ll help.

All I’ve ever wanted was to love and be loved. To have someone who’s my everything and be their everything. To share everything in my life with someone who will want to share everything in theirs with me. In the past two and a half years since breaking up with my ex, I’ve learned that getting girls is easy. Getting a girl, however, not so much. It took me this long, after all. And even now… well, there’s a reason I felt the need to write this down.