To Love Despite

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‘To begin to love someone truly completely, you will have to learn to love yourself first’, I have heard this quote umpteen number of times all my life. Recently I came across an absolutely different take to this perspective- ‘I may not know how to love myself, but Lord knows that I love you to pieces.’

I believe love is as complex as any other human emotion, if not the most complex one. It can make you do things you never imagined yourself to do and shatter your soul into a million pieces when you feel that love you have for someone is slowly fading away. So what is it about loving someone unconditionally that hurts so much? What is it about love that makes us who we are even when we are not completely ourselves? When is the ‘right’ time to start loving someone else? Once we learn how to love ourselves or despite ever being able to do so.

I can’t answer all these questions at once. But I can try to answer the last one- the right time to begin loving someone. I believe what makes love last a lifetime is not when we love ourselves as much as we love our partner; it is when even though we can’t ever begin to love ourselves, we accept who we are, down to the deepest core. Relationships wither away mostly because of the guilt we hold inside of us of not being good enough to be loved because we continue to blame ourselves for our past actions.

Even though some of us can’t love ourselves as much as we love the people around us, if we can accept who we are, the love we have can continue to last because then we won’t be second guessing our every move, we will know that what we need in our life is what we deserve and we are worth every second of the love and care  that we can’t give ourselves at times.

Someone wise once said, ‘We like because and we love despite’. So, when we begin to like ourselves for who we are and accept every inch of our existence, past, present and future, that’s when we can begin to love ourselves despite all that we are not. That’s where my friends, true love for someone begins. May your first ever special someone be you!

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