To Love Is To Hurt

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,” – Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

And that is my biggest problem; I love too much and too easily. I don’t need a reason to love someone, I just do. It’s like my soul was manufactured for the sole purpose of loving and loving abundantly. It feels more natural than breathing. As it fills every part of me, I feel alive. At times it is as though my bones are vibrating, as my body struggles to contain the love my soul continues to create. It is overwhelming and churns out like an endless well buried deep within. Many would say this is a good thing, but I find it difficult to agree. Like the sun, my love creates warm and comfort for others, but leaves me burnt out and exhausted.The problem with people that love easily is that they don’t know how to ask for love. In our minds, love is something that is effortlessly given and thus believe others will reciprocate the love we feel.

When you don’t know how to ask for love, when you are a creature of love, you begin to beg for it unconsciously. You may try to hide it, in the way I hide it by reading books and doing French. However those around you will sense it. And those that take pleasure in using the weak will exploit you at every opportunity. I have watched over and over again as people have used me and discarded me when they had their fill. They would make empty promises, knowing that I would believe it. They made excuses as to why they couldn’t give me the love I gave them. And although it pained me, I accepted it. I accepted the little I received, because surely little was better than nothing. I was alone but I wasn’t truly alone because at least someone sorta kinda loved me….

This week I was shown that sorta kinda is not enough. I realised that people like me will always be second best to everyone and everything else. There will always be an excuse as to why we don’t deserve the love we are giving. I have come to see that the world prefers anything but people like me. I watch as the love I have given is then invested in someone else. I then have to accept it when I’m told I need to change this or that because I’m too naïve, too soft, too decent. It is as though they want the love that is generated within me to metamorphosize into hate and animosity. Or maybe someone like me will never be good enough for a world that idolises instant gratification.

So today I feel unpretty. Today I wish to drown the soul that is me, so that it dies before it is killed by the world. I wish to transform into everything that is not me, maybe then will I experience love in abundance.