LOVE & PAIN

LOVE & PAIN 

Love and pain are two extreme ends of the emotional spectrum. On one end is the red color that stems from love and on the other end is the red color that stems from pain. They are intertwined and lead to each other but the red from love leads to the red of pain more frequently than the red from pain leads to the red of love. 

Most of us are familiar with pain, the kind that stems from losing someone we love; like when we lose family, friends or the one that makes you smile in the goofiest way (heart-breakfast, lol). I've experienced pain and I can confirm how not pretty it is. 

From early on in my childhood, I grew up acquainted with pain in form of heartbreak. I didn’t fully understand it even though it was a part of me. My heartbreaks were painful, but the pains were heartbreaking; such paradoxical emotion at a young age was just unexplainable.

There are bookish definitions of heart break but my personalized definition of heartbreak is that pain which you feel when you lose someone you've shared a part of yourself with or someone you’ve loved regardless of their imperfections. The pain is especially painful when you know that you can no longer be there for them, talk to them or share yourself with them anymore. 

Most times when we are heartbroken, we blame ourselves for the inadequacies of the people who leave us. Sometimes they maybe right for leaving us because of our own mistakes, but it can be hard to accept that we didn’t do enough. It can be hard to accept that we didn’t try hard enough but we also need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge the hard truth by saying _‘I fucked this up.’_ 

Sustaining a relationship is hard work and doing the barest minimum while at it won’t make up for it. Sometimes, going all out and risking it might be what is needed. On one hand, there are the few people who give all these _I don’t like calls, I don’t know how to give gifts, I’m always busy and so on_ excuses but funnily, they don't know that these things that are avoided might be what you need to do to make your relationship work. Things like _talking about how you feel even when it’s hard for you to open up, asking for help when you’re down so you can be supported, learning to talk on calls for long; the list is endless_ might be the solutions to a relationship that's seemingly hard. 

For instance, in our careers we never stop getting better, we keep improving in order to get promoted but when it comes to our relationships we decide to put a limit to what we can do. We decide that our partners should accept us just the way we are, they shouldn’t ask for more because you don’t want to improve. Putting into our relationship, the same energy which we expend on our career could make all the difference in the relationship.

On the other hand, there are some of us who have actually learnt and understand the need to grow and do everything we need to do and more. We are open about how we feel as well as how we communicate, love and support those that we really like, yet the ones we like don’t find this enough. Instead, they decide to leave because they cannot open up to us. Sighs! If you have one of such partners who isn’t willing to talk to you and tell you what you did wrong so that you can improve rather they will end things, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all you've endured because  you don't deserve the heartbreak but you do not need to beat yourself up or get worked up because they have failed to see your worth. It's their loss and your gain. You've grown to love, you did show it, you communicated, made sacrifices, gave room to improve and upgrade yourself to your partner's desires and taste. Look at yourself and how better, fluid and stronger you've become, you rock!

In life, you need to learn to not settle for lesser than you deserve, you need to take as much as you give. Improvement shouldn’t be a one sided affair. Some people talk about what they want from you, but won’t improve, work on themselves or upgrade to a level that you want from them too. When you're in such situation, there’s no need for you to beat yourself up if it doesn’t work out. Just know that you gave your best and you deserve their best in return.

We all have what we want from love while in love. As I grow I want to love someone who is open to growing. If I give you the world, I want you to give me the world too; if I give you my time, make out time for me too. Yes I am not perfect, neither are you but together we can help each other become the best possible version of ourselves and that there is what I think love is. I do not expect the journey to be smooth, I will love you hard but I will fight for you harder. I'll embrace the pain, just as much as I embrace the good times. Love isn’t a fairytale where you sit on the beach and sip a chill cocktail while the sun is shining graciously and kissing your skin. It’s a beautiful combination of the ups and down, the fights and make ups, the smiles and the tears all mixed into a dough to bake what is called love!

To everyone experiencing the dough, I hope you have the fortitude to scale through the process because at the end it's all LOVE. Don't give up on the process and remember that I'd always be here cheering for you.

Kisses, love and spiky roses. 💕😘