I Taught You What Love Is

One of the deepest and most agonizing questions someone could ask themselves is “Why was I not good enough?”

When I did all I could do, when I said all I could say, when I loved with all I had in me…but in the end, it must not have been enough.  I wasn’t enough.

Or so you thought.

See, the thing about being vulnerable and loving someone and investing in their life is that you are giving them every open door to hurting you.  Like Augustus said in The Fault In Our Stars – “You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world.  But you do have a say in who hurts you.”  Loving someone and trusting them to not rip my heart out from the seams is an act of faith that takes all the courage in the world to muster.

But when it all crashed in a myriad of shootings stars that dispersed, one of the first questions that came to mind was a simple one word:

“Why?”

It can be asked in many different forms.  A cry, a scream, a gut-wrenching sob, or merely a whisper.  I think I may have asked it in all of those ways.

And over time, I’ve missed you.  I’ve missed how you loved me, how you made me feel, the things we used to do together, the connection that we had.  But what you may not know is that I’ve realized something.  It took many sleepless nights, long, arduous thought processes, furrowed brows, and quiet tears to unravel all the knots of confusion and pain.  And I finally realized that: how you loved me was so much of a reflection of everything I was, everything I gave to you, and everything I am.

Looking back now, I must’ve been so blind because I see now that it was I who taught you.  I taught you how to feel again.  I was the example you needed in your life to make you see and understand that there is such a thing as unconditional love, and there is such a thing as faithfulness, and there is such a thing as a woman who wants to be with you and only you.  And that woman was me.

I wondered “Why?” for so long after, but now I no longer ask that.  Because I know I was enough.  In fact, I was too much.  It scared you.  I scared you.  The strength, peace, love and beauty I felt when I was with you, I thought it was because of you.  But it wasn’t.  I thought I enamored you and loved you in ways you never knew existed because you couldn’t take your eyes off of me.  I made you feel alive again.  I taught you what love is.  But you didn’t know how to accept it.  And then I thought I was the problem.  I thought I wasn’t enough.

But I know now that I was already these things.  Long before I met you.  And I continued to be all of this, even after you left.

Because the person I am when I’m around you isn’t because of you.  It’s because of my love for you.  And even if you aren’t around to see it, I’m still strong, and beautiful, and full of love.  And I always will be.

I started writing this for my audience, in an attempt to encourage the recent heartbreaks that I know of, but not even halfway through, I realized that I was writing this for myself.  About myself.
And the tears were freeing.