Love
It took a really long time until coming home to myself was a celebration.
Loving someone, I think, is diving head first into insanity. And I don’t mean these words lightly. I think that there are many things that we as human beings will achieve in our lifetimes, but loving other people will be in the top five bravest things we do.
Let me tell you why.
Love, as I have observed, is something that has the power to completely blindside you. When you are in love with someone, you look at them through rose-coloured glasses that allow them to sell you a sufficient amount of dreams. To be able to love other people, you need to be someone that is okay with plunging head first into uncertainty and insecurity.
You need to be willing to lay it all on the line, for the sake of stripping yourself emotionally bare and exposing all your parts to someone who tells you they’ll nurse all the bruises and kiss the scars.
The brave part is that you have to trust them. You have to trust that you can be your complete self without judgement, and trust that they will have your best interests at heart. Only then can you fully give yourself to someone.
This is because a lot of the time, the risk is worth the reward and the only way to experience the euphoria that accompanies the success is to take the risk, to dive right in and commit fully. Otherwise you’re half-assing it and you are bound to fail. Go big or go home right?
Sometimes you get a taste of the reward, it is called infatuation and it tries its best to guide you in the right direction.
Even when you are just infatuated, you are gambling. You are risking your heart and your sanity to see if someone is telling the truth when they say they want to give a shit about your feelings.
You are putting yourself in the position where your happiness is partially in someone else’s hands, but only because their palms feel amazing.
As much as I personally feel it is something that is extremely high risk, I also know that if you bet on the right horse, you could go home a very happy and rich person.
The same goes with love. If you time it right, if you manage it right, if you put in the time to care about what you are investing in, you could be making a very smart bet!
But of course, there’s always the possibility that the horse could be ill that day or they could just decide they don’t like you and won’t reply to your text messages ever again.
Either way, you never know. You never know if what you are betting on will deliver. But, you bet anyway. Sometimes you have long winning streaks and other times you lose it all.
That is what happens when you purposefully choose to have another person inhabit your space. You are basically saying,
“I am giving you myself, my heart. I am betting on you.”
And it’s up to them not to break your heart or hurt you. But they can at any time. But you trust them anyway. Because you know that what love is, is being vulnerable.
It is stripping yourself bare of all your fears, slowly peeling back layers and layers of yourself to put on display. It is hanging your insecurities out to dry and having someone stroke them and kiss them and gently exist for them, to nurture you and grow you.
Sometimes there are people out there that are meant to enter our lives to teach us how to love ourselves and love all the parts of us that we sometimes cannot face.
I am talking about all kinds of love too. Be it romantic or platonic love, love between friends, love between parents and their children. You are promising to care about someone and trust that they will care about you too.
Now that’s fucking brave; so don’t ever let anyone tell you different.
I love LOVE. I love the people in my life. I love the life I live. I love food. I love shopping. I love peace. I love everybody. But most importantly, I love myself.
…
And now, love is coming home to myself every day and choosing to stay the night.
By Anne Hambuda
Twitter: @MissAnneDastood
Instagram: @missannedastood
