They say you have to love yourself before others can love you. Or maybe they say you need to love yourself first, before you can love another. And no doubt that a love shared between people who love and respect themselves with be a truer and more respectful love, but they don’t tell you how people will love you anyway. And you’ll love others, too. It will be messier because you’re so far from self-actualization, but this won’t make it any less powerful.
And you won’t be able to let people truly love you as long as you don’t believe you’re deserving of it. Sometimes, they’ll walk away. But some people, people like myself, with love you all the harder because of it, because of the potential we see in you, the light of hope in your eyes.
People will get hurt. It’s inevitable. Even people who know they’re hoping against hope in a reality that just can’t cater to them. Even when no one wants to get hurt. Even when, at the end of the day, there could be love between people. People get hurts.
I guess that’s life. I suppose it’s easier to sing along with that lesson as an Alanis song than to learn it yourself, especially when it takes so many times for that lesson to really sink it. i’m not entirely sure why that is. Perhaps it’s just hard to be a realistic when you have the heart of an optimist. Maybe I am doomed to always see the best in people even if, in reality, they’re more likely to hut me than to be their best.
How many more times do I ignore warning signs, I wonder, before I turn off this path?
