I want to learn not to worry about love...

                                                                                         ~Alice Walker

I think I have spent my entire life worrying about love.

Wondering when it will find me, if it would find me, and if I were even worthy of it.

I spent a better part of my teens wanting boys to love me, even though they weren't capable of it. (Or were busy loving somebody else...) When I finally did find some one I thought loved me, I was sure that was it. I would never have to have my heart broken again.

However, my heart did break again. Over and over. It broke when I found out this boy didn't really love me. But it broke even further when I found out I did not love myself. The pain of not loving yourself is and will always be greater than any man breaking your heart - as chances are, you broke it long before he did.

I sat for months in two different rooms. I went from shop to shop in my car. I went to work. I watched the sunrise and sunset from the windows of that coffee shop. I watched the moonrise outside the same coffee shop, through the smoke from my cigarette, and the cigarettes from a group of people I pretended were my friends.

While I did all this, I worried about love. I worried about why it felt like my family didn't love me. I worried about why I didn't love me. I even worried that my dog didn't love me. ("WHY? WHY don't you like the sweater I bought you? It was TWENTY DOLLARS. Chihuahuas love sweaters! What is WRONG with YOU?")

Slowly but surely, I stopped worrying about everyone else so much, and I just thought about myself.

I watched Sex and the City in my pajamas. I went to the same bookstore night after night. My sister played me Jack Johnson in her car while we snuck out and went to In 'n Out burger because we didn't like the dinner our step dad made that night.

I cried listening to Fiona Apple. I screamed Since You Been Gone at the top of my lungs while flying down the freeway.

I figured out I could write.

Somewhere between all this self discovery, I met a man who made me feel like the most interesting person in the world. I would spend the next three months telling stories about myself, reading stories about him, and realizing that maybe, just maybe I could love both myself and someone else at the same time.

Maybe, just maybe, I would be loved for the first time.

We spent our winter on opposite ends of the world, tucked in whatever empty, frozen corners we could find, talking until the wee hours of the morning.

We spent our spring, in love, and on opposite ends of the world. Both continuing to learn to love again, and learning how to love ourselves.

By the time we were finally under one roof, under one blanket, I knew love.

But knowing love doesn't mean I stopped worrying about it. I worried about the lost love of toxic friends, the love I never had from toxic parents, and still fought to fully love myself.

Somewhere along the way, all this worrying caused me to build up my own little shield. A shield that helped me fight the outside world. All the people who wanted a piece without wanting to give anything in return. I fought and I fought and then one day, I realized I was starting to fight the people who were on my team.

I got so concerned with protecting my heart that I forgot that I didn't need to protect it from you.

I was busy declaring to the world that if you don't love me enough you will never get in, that there were moments where I didn't let you in. I was hard, when I only needed to be soft. I was defensive, when there was no attack. I was tough when I could have been gentle.

And I worried about love when it was all around me.

There are people in my life who will never love me like I need them to. And that's okay.

I want to learn not to worry about love. I want to learn that just because one man did not love me the right way, it doesn't mean that you will stop loving me the right way.

I will stop worrying about love. I will honor it's coming. I will honor you, and all of the love that's on it's way.