It was beautiful, and I still lost it—because I was too broken to believe I deserved it.

I didn’t learn love from the healthy kind. The one that we all dream of as little kids. I learned it from the kind that comes with conditions. The kind that makes you earn softness. The kind that gives you warmth and then takes it away, just to see what you’ll do. The one that goes quietly as a punishment. The kind that teaches you to call anxiety “butterflies,” to call jealousy “care,” to call control “protection,” to call inconsistency “a rough phase.”

And it wasn’t just romantic love. It was friendships too.

For a long time, I didn’t really have good friends. Or let’s say friends at all. I had people who stayed as long as I was useful, as long as I was easy, as long as I didn’t need too much. As long as I didn’t mention how I was doing. People who promised they’d be there for the good and the bad, and then disappeared the second life got heavy. People who made me feel replaceable. People who taught me that being loved meant being convenient. And at that only if everyone else was busy.

So of course I ended up in toxic relationships.

Not because I wanted pain, or because I thought that was the love I deserved—but because pain was familiar. Because chaos felt normal. Because my nervous system recognized unpredictability as home. Because when you’ve only ever been given broken love, broken starts to feel like the only kind that exists.

That’s what unhealthy love does: it conditions you.

It pulls you into a constant flight or fight mentality.

It trains you to expect the switch-up. To wait for the mood change. To read between every line. To apologize first. To shrink yourself before someone else can tell you you’re too much. It makes you believe love is something you chase, something you prove, something you earn by being perfect.

It makes you confuse intensity with intimacy.

It makes you think the highs mean something, even when the lows are destroying you.

It makes you believe hate is love.

And then one day, something different finds you.

Something calm.

Something steady.

Something that doesn’t confuse a no with a yes.

Something that doesn’t demand you to bleed to be believed.

And instead of feeling safe right away, you feel confused—because peace can feel unfamiliar when your whole life has been loud. When you’re used to love being a storm, quiet can feel like the moment right before thunder. You start waiting for the catch. You start bracing for the part where it turns. Start expecting the worst outcome.

Because healthy love doesn’t feel like begging.

It doesn’t feel like guessing.

It doesn’t punish you with silence.

It doesn’t make you earn basic kindness.

It doesn’t make you smaller to keep it.

It doesn’t make you fight for respect.

Healthy love is simple in a way that almost hurts at first.

Not “easy,” but simple.

But a simple that at that will confuse you because you were taught that simple did not exist.

Simple is consistency.

It’s respect.

It’s someone staying the same person on good days and bad days.

It’s being able to speak without rehearsing.

It’s being able to have needs without feeling like you’re committing a crime.

Its knowing that even if you don’t talk for a while, nothing will change.

And slowly—through friendships, through small moments, through someone showing up again and again—you start to learn what love is actually supposed to be like.

You learn it in the way someone listens without turning it into a fight that you have wants, needs and beliefs.

In the way someone apologizes without making you feel guilty for being hurt.

In the way someone doesn’t make you compete for their attention.

In the way you don’t have to perform to be kept.

You learn that love can be calm.

And that’s when it gets painful in a different way.

Because sometimes you finally meet something real—something beautiful—and you still lose it.

Not because it wasn’t good.

Not because it wasn’t worth it.

Not because there wasn’t love.

But because you were still bleeding from everything that came before.

Because you didn’t know how to receive love without flinching.

Because you didn’t know how to be loved without panicking.

Because your instincts were built for survival, not softness.

So you overthink. You test. You pull away before you can be left. You ask for reassurance in ways that sound like accusations. You read into silence like it’s danger. You mistake peace for distance. You don’t mean to, but you bring old wounds into new hands.

And then one day it’s gone.

Gone not because you got rid of them, but because the timing wasn’t right.

And the cruelest part is that you’re still in love.

Not just with the person—but with what it felt like to finally touch something healthy. With the version of you that existed for a moment when you believed, maybe I can have this. With the hope you let yourself hold for the first time.

With the small taste of heaven you got for the very first time in your life.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point where I can be with the person who taught me what love is supposed to feel like. I don’t know if life will ever circle back in that way. I don’t know if timing will ever soften, or if healing will ever line up perfectly with another chance, or if the mental distance will ever be closed.

But I do know this: love like that doesn’t disappear just because it ends.

If it was real, it leaves something behind.

It leaves you changed.

It leaves you with a new standard.

It leaves you with proof that your heart wasn’t asking for too much—you were just asking the wrong people.

So no matter what happens, I’ll love them in the way that doesn’t demand anything back. I’ll support them from afar. I’ll want good things for them, even if those good things don’t include me. And I think a small part of me will always carry a flicker of hope—not the kind that keeps me stuck, but the kind that stays gentle. The kind that says: if it’s meant, it will find its way. And if it isn’t, it still mattered.

It left a special place in a heart that didn’t know how to be loved correctly.

Until then, I’m not bound to anyone.

And for the first time, that doesn’t feel like emptiness—it feels like space.

Like absolute peace.

Because for the first time, I have amazing friends. The kind I used to think only existed in movies. The kind that stay. The kind that don’t make love feel like a test. The kind that remind me I’m not hard to love—I just needed love that was honest and real.

And maybe that’s the most love-filled part of all of this: realizing love isn’t only romantic.

Love is the friend who checks in without being asked.

Love is the person who celebrates you without competing with you.

Love is the one who holds your truth gently. Love is laughter after a hard week.

Love is being seen and not punished for it.

Love is the little routines you build with your friends, which without, you can’t imagine your life anymore.

So I’m learning to let love reach me in every form it comes in.

Ive learned to romanticize life and everything it comes in. With that I don’t mean the hurt but the flowers, a kid laughing at you, the sun, every little detail about life that makes the earth lovable.

I’m learning that healing doesn’t mean I stop loving. It means I stop abandoning myself to keep love.

And maybe one day—whether it’s with them, or with someone new, or simply with the life I build—love will feel like home.

Not the kind of home you have to earn.

The kind you’re allowed to rest in.

The kind people will recognize you for.

Yours truly 🤍