Relearning How to Love

I’m not “too much.”

I’m simply not built for half-presence anymore.

I am learning how to love again.

And not just to love, but to love differently than I ever have before.

The truth is… I never stopped believing in love.

Even after heartbreak.

Even after years of being unseen.

Even after loving meant carrying more than one heart should ever have to.

Even after I learned to brace instead of soften.

Some part of me never stopped believing in connection, tenderness, commitment, shared warmth, and shared life.

I still believe in love.

I still believe in choosing and being chosen.

I still believe in two people holding something sacred together.

But the kind of love I believe in has changed.

I no longer romanticize effort that empties me.

I no longer confuse endurance for devotion.

I no longer call it love when I’m the one doing all the emotional lifting.

I don’t want to hold the entire relationship anymore.

I don’t want to overfunction.

I don’t want to be the emotional scaffolding holding everything upright while I quietly collapse inside.

That nearly broke me. That wore me down. That taught my nervous system that love meant exhaustion.

Not anymore. Now, I want love that meets me.

Love that stands beside me.

Love that reaches too.

Love that tends.

Love that doesn’t need me to disappear to make room for it.

I want security, the kind I can exhale into. Consistency without begging. Presence without performing.

A love that says, “You can rest here. You don’t have to carry it all.”

I want steadiness and integrity.

When life gets heavy, I want presence, not absence.

Leadership that feels like partnership, not control.

A grounded presence that can hold weight with me… instead of handing it all to me.

I want someone who stays.

Who breathes with me through the storm.

Who doesn’t shut down and leave me to fix the world, but chooses to walk beside me.

I want to be held — not just in arms, but in spirit.

I want a love that doesn’t ask me to explain myself away.

That doesn’t make me prove I deserve tenderness.

That doesn’t disappear when vulnerability asks to be honored.

And I want something else, too — something I have earned with fire:

I want someone who can stand beside my light.

Someone who isn’t intimidated or threatened by my strength, depth, compassion, softness, or power… because he has his own.

Someone who doesn’t shrink me, compete with me, or dim me…

but feels proud to walk beside me.

Proud to say, “That’s her. And I love everything about the way she shines.”

For a long time, I learned to make myself smaller to be acceptable.

Now I know better.

Now I want love that celebrates who I am — not love that survives at the expense of me.

And here is the part I hold with tenderness and truth:

I do not want these things because I am demanding.

I do not want them because I am unrealistic.

I want them because I finally understand

that this is what love should have been all along.

I am not asking for too much. I am asking for what is right.

Maybe one day, loving won’t carry so much memory with it.

Maybe it won’t ache so much.

Maybe it will feel less like bravery and more like home — steady, warm, safe, shared.

But today, loving again means this:

I choose to believe in love without sacrificing myself for it.

I stay open without abandoning my worth.

I hope while honoring what my heart deserves.

I am relearning how to love… and this time, I refuse to disappear from my own story.