This Thing Called 'Love'

It wasn't long ago when I got my heart broken. But sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday.

For too long, I allowed myself to be in a situation that constantly made me feel like I wasn't good enough, and that I had to constantly do and say things to be accepted. Thankfully, it eventually came to an end. At the time my heart wasn't ready to say goodbye, but my mind was.
Some days I feel like I'm over the whole situation. It's all in the past. It doesn't bother me anymore, and I've forgiven those that hurt me. But on other days I question how anybody could treat another in such a way, be so aware of their insecurities and use them to their advantage, and I have to forgive them all over again.

But just like with every cloud, this one had a silver lining, too.😉​

I realize now that the whole experience taught me what love really is.
There's a quote I came across a while ago - one that I now realize I didn't fully understood until now. It reads:
"Everyone says that love hurts, but that isn't true. Loneliness Hurts. Rejection Hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel loved again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt."
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Although many of us may experience true love first, we only really learn what it is after learning what it's not.
At one point, I thought love was being told all the things you wanted to hear, and long stares that made your heart melt. I thought love was a whole number of things that now pale in comparison to what I've discovered it actually is.
Not long ago, God brought to memory an incident that took place when I was younger...
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I was craving a Fanta Orange soda one afternoon, and I asked my Dad to buy me one. But he couldn't afford it. I was disappointed, but there wasn't much I could do about it. So I let it go and completely forgot about it. My Dad left the house a little later, and shortly after he left, my older brother walked in.
He asked me why I wanted a soda (an odd question now that I think about it, lol), and I asked him how he knew that I wanted one in the first place. He told me that he'd just met my Dad leaving, and my Dad had asked him whether he had any money that he could use to buy me a soda. I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of love in that moment. Suddenly the fact that I hadn't gotten the soda didn't seem so important anymore.
And I guess it's the same way with any encounter with true love. You don't really have to get what you want to feel loved; sometimes just knowing that someone did whatever they could to try and get it for you is enough.
Since then, God has reminded me of so many other instances when family and friends did things to make me feel loved, to assure me that I am accepted, and that I am indeed enough.
Through these reminders I have become more aware of how our differences as human beings as well as the different ways we have been brought up influence the way we feel love as well as how we show it. The way I would like to receive love isn't the way I always receive it, but that doesn't mean that the other person isn't giving it out - in most cases, they are just giving it in a different way from what I was expecting. And it took me going through a painful experience to realize that.
So in a weird way, I feel somewhat grateful for the heartache - because it opened my eyes to what love really is, even though it first showed me what love is not.
Love has no one definition; neither does it always come in the same way. But when it does make an appearance, you'll know.

​- ✗O✗O.