No one ever said life and love were easy.  In fact, for most all of us those are the two most difficult things we will face between birth and death.  We spend our entire lives living to be loved or to find love, whether within ourselves or in someone else.  Some of us are lucky enough to find that blissful peace, many of us never will, and eventually all of us will suffer the soul crashing pain of loss.

When love is new and fresh it is beautiful and exciting; the highest of highs along with the invincible rush of adrenaline.  From our early years with our first puppy love crushes through adulthood, love attacks us and attaches to us in many forms.  Even the most mild of afflictions can leave us breathless and wanting for more.

It is that euphoria that drives us to find new love or to hold onto old love.  It is an addiction we feed, whether it is to find that grounding love in ourselves or see that reflection of acceptance from another’s eyes.  Love is beautiful.  Love is kind.  Love is wonderful.  Love is working together as both partners and individuals.  Love is supportive and encouraging.  Love is passionate and thrilling, and at times peaceful and calming.  It cannot be described in mere words. But it is all things good and healthy, even the battles serve their purpose to make love stronger.  But love misplaced can be crippling, and painfully debilitating.

Too many times so many find themselves in the grasp of the memory of love.  Not even hope, for hope is usually a good thing.  But the memory that lingers of what might have been if only…. We make excuses for why it went wrong.  We deceive ourselves with lies on how it will get better.  And we stagnate ourselves and our lives in a rut of painful familiarity clinging with white knuckles to one of the most perilous of words in the English dictionary:

If.

If I did this they will love me again.  If this changed things could be better.  If I was a better person…. If I had a better job….  If we lived somewhere else….  If I moved….  If they changed….  If they settle down….. So many ifs and each one of them sink into us like hooks, anchoring our hearts in a loveless place filled with anger, confusion, self doubt, and fear.  It is a deception.  The emotional wolf in sheep’s clothing teasing us with possibilities that logic dictates will never happen.  But the heart almost always over-powers the mind, because the call of Love and its warm metaphors is more appealing than the sterile coldness of logic.

Stronger than any opiate.  Real, honest, true, and reciprocated love has the power to bring about peace, serenity, passion and fire, trust, and respect.  But when love is gone or never was, and you refuse to see and move on, it also has the power to make even the strongest person hollow and weak.  Yet so many of us, myself included, have held on to something that wasn’t real simply because we were afraid of what was to come.  Or rather, what wasn’t. 

The guise of love, painful as it may be, was easier to handle than the thought of being alone.  And that simple fact is what eventually will cause a person to lose themselves completely.  Happiness does not come from another person.  Love cannot be commanded or controlled.  We cannot will someone to love us simply because we want them to.  And life will in fact go on with out them.  And if we let go, truly let go, we open ourselves up for the most pure and honest of loves to find us.  But we must have faith and stop holding onto the ifs.

I always say, “Never give up.”  Never give up on yourself! Don’t settle for any ifs or what might have beens. Believe enough in who you are go let go and live.

Let go of the lies.  Let go the anger.  Let go of the pain.  No more yelling.  No more unbearable silence. No more not being seen.  We all deserve better.

We deserve better than to stay together, simply because we are afraid of being destroyed should we part.

~sierra