The old saying goes that we find love when we least expect it. I never really understood that until recently. I didn’t believe it because I had seen so many people chasing love everywhere and it seemed like I must do the same.

I thought about the people who truly made me feel loved in the most unconditional way and often it was something that probably did not make sense to the outside world.

As a child I was closest to my two Grandfathers who were both very different. One had lived through two World Wars and was quite old and frail by the time I was born (and I was a ball of energy). The other was still pretty young and healthy and a career military man who had been very hard on everyone in his life.

They both really wanted a Grandson and I know that initially I was a disappointment to them. It didn’t help that I was born under stressful circumstances too. My Mom got pretty sick while she was pregnant with me… in fact, I was making her sick. I was a couple of weeks late, induced labour that turned into an emergency c-section when my heart rate dropped alarmingly. The umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck twice and I wouldn’t have made it through a natural birth without likely brain damage. Not only that, I also have a very large birthmark on my back that starts right below my hairline and goes halfway down my back. Once I was actually born many, many doctors came to see me because I was so unusual. I wasn’t aware of it as a child, but the type of birthmark I have combined with the location are sometimes associated with serious neurological issues – it goes so deep into the skin it can actually penetrate the brainstem and spinal cord and often these issues don’t show up until the late teens. No wonder I got taken to a few specialists about it and no wonder much of my family seemed so concerned and like they were also afraid to get too attached to me. So, not only was I just not a Grandson, I was a pretty unremarkable Granddaughter.

However, over the next few years both of my Grandfathers showed me tremendous amounts of love that I’m not sure were apparent to the outside world. In fact, I only have one picture of the one Grandfather and I on the subway in St. Petersburg. I was just leaning on him, feeling comfortable in a strange place, pretty much obscuring him from view. It goes to show that having a photo moment does not make a lasting memory.

My older Grandfather was pretty tired a lot of the time. He wasn’t really up for playing with me, but he would read me stories. I would sit with him in his bed and he read me every story in my rather large book collection as many times as I wanted, even though I am sure it was hard for him. Then I started reading to him before he passed away when I was four. When talk of me came up, because I remember people feeling sorry for me due to the birthmark, he would say that God made me extra smart to make up for it. By the time I was in kindergarten, I was reading way above my grade. I sometimes wonder if my love of reading was a way I tried to stay connected to him on some subconscious level. For a long time, I read everything I could get my hands on, including every single book in the house by the time I was eleven. Most of them were way above an eleven year old’s presumed reading comprehension. I learned more about history, geography and so many other topics of interest through my love of reading than I ever did in school.

My other Grandfather was a lot younger and very active and we used to do so many things together. I loved our long bike rides. He never underestimated my abilities because I was a girl and young. Sometimes strangers would be shocked at how far I had ridden on my bike and would tell him that I wouldn’t make it back and he always laughed and told them that he had no doubt that I would. He taught me how to shoot safely when I was seven, not because he thought I would need to shoot anyone. It wasn’t about imagining an enemy, just learning focus and precision and finding a target and being patient (which was very hard for me) and showing me that he trusted me. I didn’t associate guns with death or violence, it was just a skill to learn that he was good at so he shared it with me (of course he was very big on gun safety). He made giant bonfires more often than he wanted to because he knew I loved sitting by them and hearing stories and staying up past my bedtime. He took me for ice cream often. He knew I loved swings, so he made me the best one ever and hung it on the giant tree by their lake house, I have no idea how he climbed that high. Sadly, the Warsaw airport on our way to Canada was the last time I saw him. He died very unexpectedly and suddenly a year later and never made it to visit us here the following year as planned. I was so numb from the stress of moving to a new country and learning a new language and leaving everything behind by the time he died that I didn’t even cry when I heard the news and I didn’t get to go to the funeral.

The most pure love I have found since then hasn’t been through online dating or a situation where I had hoped to find someone or even a hobby or friend I expected to like. I was never honestly prepared for it at all. I think when we prepare, it becomes like a job interview. It’s all about the image we try to portray and not who we actually are. Also, when we have a picture in our head of how things are supposed to go, it’s impossible for reality to match a fantasy. Instead, I have usually found love of all kinds at a time when I was hurt and vulnerable and thought I wanted it least. It’s often been the people I didn’t really expect to even like, yet there was some force beyond our power that pulled us together. We hear about love as being beautiful and easy and about making a choice to love someone. The truth is, it scared the shit out of me and I had no control over it whatsoever. I tried to fight it and I couldn’t admit to anyone, most of all myself, that it was happening. We like to feel like we have a lot of control over our lives, but the reality is, our attempt at controlling the situation is just keeping us from finding the things that are meant for us. It didn’t seem to matter if I fought it or sabotaged it or tried to hold on too tight or said something terrible because I was so freaked out, somehow I couldn’t push them away no matter what. The parts of me that everyone had been so afraid to love were what made them seem to love me more. It was actually really hard to trust at first. I have had pretty bad judgement in the past and the people who showed me love felt like exactly what I wanted (and needed) to hear in a way that made me believe they were being dishonest because no one had been that nice to me in a long time. The unfamiliar is terrifying even when it’s amazing.

I used to overthink things and want a plan for everything, but I have learned that when we have no expectations and no plan, things can evolve in a more beautiful way than we could ever expect, we just have to let go of trying to control things. I have also learned that holding on to things that aren’t working can keep us from more beauty than we realize. We need to make space for new things in life in some way (even if it is just a mental shift) and move forward even if it is scary. This isn’t just in terms of romantic, but all kinds of love. The love we have for friends, jobs, hobbies, places we live. All the things in our life our meant to teach us and make us grow and evolve. Some we outgrow, some grow with us just because they want to. I am a different person today than I was yesterday and the person I was two years ago is almost a stranger to me.

We need to learn to let go and not hold on so tight that we lose the opportunity for something better to come along. Relationships with anyone and everyone shouldn’t be so hard, if there is reciprocated effort, even the most unlikely and difficult situations don’t really feel like work because you want to do it, you just need to nudge your ego out of the way. Then, letting go of someone you love enough to let them grow and explore on their own is what actually brings us closer together, as counterintuitive and terrifying as it is after a lifetime of hurt.

The scariest thing to admit to ourselves, no matter how many times someone tells us, is that we are, in fact, enough, and so much more for those who are brave enough to love us. They know we aren’t perfect, but we are imperfect in a way that, to them, makes us better.