We are vulnerable when we truly want a singular person more than anything or anyone else. It’s essentially because that other person is… a person. They have a free will. And a soul. And a mind. All things quite unique and apart from us. Far apart from our free will. Our soul. Our mind. We will never know what it is to be them. Or to know their deepest darkest thoughts and feelings. To see the world uniquely through their eyes. To make the mistakes they make instead of the ones we make. To love the things they love instead of the things we love. To hate the things they hate instead of the things we hate. To ache over the things that hurt them instead of the things that hurt us. To have lived and live their life instead of the life we have lived and live.

       We are afraid of being hurt.

       Your special person is also human. They can and will make mistakes. Just like you. They can and will make choices totally independent of you. One day your special person might rip your heart from its cage and crush it to the brink of certain death. Leaving you broken. Used. Spit on. Rejected. Abused. Betrayed. Unloved. Worthless. And worst of all, alone in the detritus of it all. It hurts because we become dependent on our special person. To get us through the dark nights. To hold our hand when we’re scared. To understand and sympathize with us when the rest of the world hates us. We grow to love them. We share with them our very selves. It happens covered under the joys of newness, infatuation, excitement, hormones, sex, and emotions, but it happens. We give of ourselves and it is unbelievably beautiful. It can also be quite horrifying. Especially if you think about it too much.

       And that’s why it’s so easy to become jealous and jaded. Try to control. Investigate. Probe. Pry. Violate privacies and trusts. Try to take and keep forcibly what doesn’t belong to us. We want a certain amount of security. We want to count on our special person to love us and to be there for us for all eternity. Aside from wanting to cure death and control the fabric of existence, essentially it’s our special person’s free will we want. And the sad fact of the matter is we haven’t got the right to control it or cage it or subvert it in any way shape or form. We have to remember that our special person is ONLY free to love us because they are free to NOT love us. It is their choice.

       Love, above all else, is a choice.

       And do any of us really want the love we have to take? When we think about it, doesn’t taking it, trying to control it, trying so hard to keep it – just invalidate our special person’s choice to give it to us? Aren’t we destroying the love we so desire by doing anything other than simply and openly receiving what the other person freely gives of their own volition?

       This should be the first lesson we learn as human beings:

              You can NOT make someone love you.

       YOU, can only make YOUR choice, to love someone. If they choose to love you back, it is the essence of nirvana and it pours light into your very soul. On the other hand, if they don’t love you back, life is… shit. Pure,

                                                                      unadulterated,

                                                                                                 SHIT.

       If your special someone doesn’t love you, you are left with a choice. You choose to live in pain and continue to love them. Hoping that one day your love will win them over. Or you choose to love yourself. You look inside and embrace your pain. Hold it close to you. Comfort yourself. Strengthen yourself. Collect yourself. Heal yourself. Find your self worth. Love yourself for who you are. Maybe you will choose to keep loving that special someone. Maybe you will choose to move on. But you have a choice and you cannot make that choice clearly if you don’t return to yourself, know yourself, and love yourself.

       Choosing to forego returning to yourself, and instead choosing to simply love someone else, is a farce and a lie and a pain you bring upon yourself and the world. You ignore your pain but you also ignore your very worth and identity. Denying yourself a time to greave and heal is choosing only to punish yourself and at least one other person. Not coming back to a place of wholeness where you love yourself again means that you go into the next relationship broken, hurting, and utterly dishonest. Your choices will never be entirely genuine. They will never come from a place of inner strength and true identity. You only set yourself up for failure and even more heartache. Who are you? Are you yourself? No. Not a chance. Underneath you are broken and in pain and who you are and what you do will forever be tainted with that pain and brokenness.

       Now don’t get me wrong, if you choose to jump on the next wagon that passes by, the brokenness will be covered over with new infatuations and emotions. And even the pain will be temporarily smothered with new excitement and thrills. But healing the brokenness and pain you burry and getting to a place where you can be, know and love yourself again, will be a monumental task few of us humans can ever hope to achieve. Know this, that while you attempt to climb this mountain to get back to yourself, you will be lying to your new special someone, and to yourself. Painful adjustments will have to be made along the way, and it will get increasingly difficult to be honest with your special someone, and with yourself. Slow or fast, I guarantee you that life will come crashing in on you, and you will eventually slide back down that mountain in more pain than you had before. You may still end up with that new special someone, but it’s going to be hard and painful as all hell.

       Take time with your wounded heart. You are human. Your heart is frail. Being rejected is supposed to hurt. The pain teaches you things you could never dream of learning otherwise. If you don’t take time, you’re just asking to go through it again. And one final note to all of us: Don’t be reckless. Take time with other people’s hearts. They’re frail, just like yours is.