The hardest part of my personal healing Journey has been recognizing how little I valued myself. Sadly, I allowed someone to treat me less than I deserved and I let another person dictate who I was as a person and had no real idea what I wanted for myself. I had zero self worth.
Emotional abuse is an addiction, although I didn’t know it as the time because I was too busy chasing the highs and managing the deep lows. Jumping from one moment to the next without any thought process, no mindfulness, no enjoying the moment, just surviving, controlling, holding on desperately to what was killing me.
I called this love.
I felt it, needed it, craved it, adored it…to me it was love. It was all I wanted, all I knew. I would push everything standing in my way of it, I needed it to breath. Life was empty without it. My soul felt broken, empty and meaningless when he wasn’t in my grasp.
I have since learned, this wasn’t love.
Love doesn’t hurt.
Love doesn’t make you sick.
Love doesn’t make you doubt yourself.
Love doesn’t make you hate yourself.
Love doesn’t make you hate him.
Love isn’t abusive or demeaning.
Love isn’t impatient or cynical.
Love doesn’t destroy you.
Love isn’t about control.
Love doesn’t make you choose.
Love doesn’t make you chase.
Love isn’t a prison.
Love isn’t cyclical.
I imagine and hope that love is beautiful and kind, humble, safe, peaceful, supportive and strong.
Difficult but worth it.
I want to feel it, I want to bask in its freedom. I want to taste its passion. I want to know what its like to be truly loved. Not owned.
My soul is mine now, one that has survived much heartbreak and although there are scars, it is ready to experience its final endeavor as I want for my soul to be touched by another. It will be worth the lesson I just learned and it will be worth every moment I spent on this healing Journey to feel it.
I have learned what love isn’t and I know what that feels like. Never to be felt again.
I endured many moments of fear and sadness waiting for the happiness.
No more waiting.
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