“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” - The Beatles

I posted this quote on Twitter tonight, the words lingering in the corners of my mind, the idea of loving and being loved in return haunting my thoughts these past couple of days…

Some people adhere to the idea of karma — that you get back what you put out into the world. Positive enforces the positive, just as negativity breeds more negativity. Once upon a time, I found this theory hard to fathom, beautiful though it sounded. Yet now, after having witnessed it for myself these past few months and years, I certainly believe in this cyclic balance.

But what about when it comes to love? Does the love that you put out into the world really come back to you?

For so many years, I questioned this. I’ve loved and I’ve lost, and through learning to open my heart and love again — unconditionally, without preconceptions, without fear– I’ve realized that there is so much truth in such simple words.

While I have been foolishly wondering when romantic love would once again make its way into my life, I’d been ignoring the many other forms that have wandered in. It’s easy to forget what love really means; it’s easier, still, to keep blindly looking for what has been there all along. Love isn’t just romance. Love is friendship, love is family, love is the animals we care for. Love is a passion, a dream, a life-changing moment.

Love is everywhere if we choose to look hard enough.

What you put out into the world really is what comes back to you, though we can never imagine — or expect — what form it will take when it does.

Someone once told me that you have to choose
What you win or lose, you can’t have everything
Don’t you take chances, you might feel the pain
Don’t you love in vain…

So what if it hurts me?
So what if I break down?
I’m just trying to be happy…
Leona Lewis, “Happy”

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about love lately, thanks to Elisa Doucette’s All You Need guest series. I’ve been looking back on my own life and my own insecurities and the reason for why, though I’ve dated on and off, I haven’t been in a real relationship since that first love.

It’s not about an inability to open up a part of myself and be vulnerable with others — I do that with almost every posted entry here on the blog. And it doesn’t have anything to do with not being able to commit or love someone fully — I tend to be loyal to a fault and love too much.

Rather, I think it’s about a familiar fear, and no matter how many times I face it, it still lingers in a quiet corner of my heart. It’s about a tiny voice in the back of my mind saying, “hold on to this, love now, because sooner or later it will all disappear.”

I’m desperately afraid of losing the people I care about most. And though I am able to open up and commit and get close, there’s that wall standing strong, ready and prepared to guard against the pain that will come when they decide to walk away.

Or when they pass away.

I never really experienced loss when I was growing up, though that fear made itself at home early in my adolescence. When I was a teenager, it manifested itself into an anxiety disorder that every morning whispered, “be ready, be prepared.” I was afraid of leaving the people I cared about, afraid of what would happen the second I walked away. I somehow thought I could prevent life from happening.

Hold on.

Instead of guarding myself against love as a means of protection, I fell further into it. I opened up my heart even more, growing closer with my already tight-knit family, finding close friends, and falling in love for the first time. Though that fear persisted, with the help of these loved ones I began to understand that life happens and you can’t control it.

Love now.

But then things changed again: Best friends and I grew apart. A first love became a memory as a relationship ended abruptly after four and a half years together. My grandmother and grandfather slipped away from illnesses only a few years apart. I was with each of my three beloved dogs when they all died within a year and a half.

I saw my grandmother with my mom the day before she passed away. I visited hospice with my family to tell my grandfather I loved him. I talked to my dogs as they lowered their heads and fell asleep, feeling their fur beneath my fingertips as I told them how much happiness they brought me, how much they meant to me. I told them how much I loved them.

The past eight years have seen love and loss, and though I‘ve always been able to say goodbye — though life, in some way or another, offered me the blessing of being prepared — I‘m afraid for the day when I won‘t be.

Though I’ve tried, time and again, I don’t know how to let go of loss, to reconcile this sadness that invades my heart, to rid myself of the fear and ignore the thoughts that say, “yeah, you loved them, but that wasn’t enough.”

It’s why, though I desperately long to get close to people, there’s always some invisible defense. It’s why, though I’ve been tearing the wall down bit by bit, most of that structure still remains, guarding my heart from future hurt.

It’s why there’s still a voice saying:

Hold on.

Don’t get too close.

Sooner or later, they’ll leave you, too.

And yet…

For years this voice has haunted me, clinging to me like a shadow, fear burying its way into the deepest corner of my heart. And yet, there’s something new now, letting light into that dark space and breaking through that wall. It’s another voice — speaking more clearly, stronger than the one marked by fear, saying,

Hold on. Love now. Love always.

Because it does matter; it is enough.

And that love that you feel? That will never, ever leave you.

The end of fear is where we begin
The moment we decided to let love in…
Goo Goo Dolls, “Let Love In”

So this is what healing feels like.

This emotion again bubbling up inside of me from the furthest depths of my heart, this emotion that I haven’t been willing to acknowledge for a very long time because of fear, because of past hurts, because of self-doubt and ever-constant questioning…

I’ve sheltered my heart from any prospects of finding love, placing high expectations on myself and on others, playing the part of the great pretender and convincing myself that I wasn’t worthy of such a strong emotion from another person because I was afraid, because I thought I wasn’t ready, because I thought I still had so far to travel on my own.

I’ve been independent of a relationship for so long and had become so convinced of this self-reliance that I began to believe I didn’t need or even want anyone to disrupt that. After all, I conquered the world — or at least a very small corner of it, found a source of light in some of my darkest moments, walked that long road to discovering myself all on my own.

Except, I wasn’t alone then. Not even at all. When light was shed on those darker corners of life, when tears of sorrow and joy were spilled, when I began to feel more confident in who I am and what lies within my heart, they were there — family, friends, and even this community.

Being independent doesn’t mean being alone, not when you have so much you want to share, not when your heart is fueled with such love and passion, not when you have a sudden realization that you want to be that someone to someone else. Especially not when you begin to understand that these desires transcend even yourself.

For these past two years and longer, I’ve been so consumed with my own self-discovery, trying to figure out who I am, trying to figure out my purpose, trying to figure out how to love myself again. And yet, suddenly, something is awakening inside of me; suddenly I feel a little bit of light peaking through that thick, guarded wall I’d shut myself behind. Suddenly, I feel myself opening up to the prospect of love again, not so much because I want to be loved in return, but because I have so much I want to share, because I want to be for that someone what so many have been to me.

Little by little, I feel that solid structure beginning to break, as more and more I yearn to step back into the world that I’d subconsciously hid from, opening up my heart to something that has been closed off for so long.

Little by little, I’m welcoming love back in again.

All my life I’ve been a dreamer
Dreaming dreams that always broke in two…
But I still believe in love
And I love believing…
Lea Salonga, “I Still Believe In Love”

An open letter…

I won’t be the one you think you’ve been looking for all this time. In fact, it might take us awhile to find each other, figure that out.

It will probably surprise us both.

We might not meet in a coffee shop, sitting tables apart, catching each others’ eye as we sip our lattes and tea, the heat from the cups warming our souls as we try to focus on the work on our laptops. We might glance up, get a refill, order a snack before returning to where we left off. We’ll be lost in our own thoughts, barely aware of the other until we shut down our computers, pack our bags, and briefly look back to see if we’ve left anything behind.

You might not meet me on the train as I travel to meet friends new and old in another city, or on a plane to another state, another country. We might share a polite smile of greeting as you take the seat across the aisle, but then you’ll pull your iPod from your coat pocket and watch the blur of colors as the scenery passes by the window, and I’ll settle back with a book or a journal and pen and be equally lost in thought and daydreams. We might interrupt each other for conversation — asking you where you’re going, asking me what I’m reading. But we’ll reach our stops, we’ll gather our things, smile at our brief connection with another person, and then continue to our destinations.

We might not find each other in a bookstore as we wander the same aisles. Our eyes will skim title after title, pulling out books that catch our eye before reading the inside excerpt or the first few pages to see what it really is all about, what lies beneath the cover, inside. We might stop in the same section, glance at the books we’re each holding — a range of literature and fiction, tech guides and science studies, history and philosophy — but we’ll put the book back on the shelf, thinking it’s not what we’re looking for, and continue on in our search.

No, our story may not be made up of the Hollywood first-glance, the chance meeting, the love-at-first-sight encounter, but when it happens, it will be ours just the same. I’ll make you laugh, and you’ll make me smile; I’ll banter or debate, and you’ll challenge me, matching wit against wit. I’ll be the trust you’ve been searching for, and you’ll be the shoulder I’ve been waiting to learn to lean on.

I’ll let down my guard, and you’ll let me in.

We’ll discover the world together as we discover each other. You’ll bring out the adventurous side of me, the spontaneous side I’ve often kept buried. I’ll learn to take risks, and I’ll be willing to take that risk with you. We’ll encourage each other as we chase our dreams; we’ll celebrate when we succeed and hold on when we fail. And though we might sometimes find ourselves apart, we’ll also find ourselves looking for ways to get back to each other.

It won’t be perfect. I’m stubborn and sometimes too independent and reluctant to let down that guard.

But I’ll surprise you.

I’ll surprise myself.

And I can promise you there will be a night where I burn dinner or take the wrong road and get us lost or say something incredibly stupid that has you scratching your head and holding back a laugh.

But there will be laughter. And honesty. And trust. And love.

I can promise you that there will always be that.

I won’t be the one you’ve been looking for all this time, not the one you expected. But when we find each other…

When that day comes when we realize we’ve found each other, we’ll know that maybe we were wrong to be looking for anyone else.

We climb, we crawl
Tear down the wall
That we’ve torn down before
It’s not too late…
Shiny Toy Guns, “I Owe You A Love Song”

I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself of my own strength, trying to fight vulnerability for fear of what it means to lay down your guard. I’ve built these walls, layer after layer, day after day, never realizing how thick they were getting because all the while I went on loving, caring, smiling, laughing. Yet still the wall grew — a silent, standing guard between the outside world and my heart.

If I tear down just one layer, I could ruin everything, my mind constantly reminds me. I could end up hurting someone.

I could end up hurting myself.

And so I hold myself back and the wall keeps building, the distance between me and possibility continuing to grow. And all the while I’m still loving, caring, smiling, laughing behind this wall that’s getting too high, too thick. I can still feel; I can still love. But not fully, and not completely. Because that would mean letting someone in behind this wall I’ve so carefully constructed.

And I’m afraid what that might mean.

Yes. Sometimes, I’m afraid of finding happiness.

Sometimes there are rare moments when a small part of me wonders if I deserve it.

I know that this part of me is very wrong. But I also know that all fear holds some truth. This fear is what this wall is built upon. Not just bricks of experiences, but layers of what-if, held together by a mortar mix of sudden, unexpected insecurities.

You can carry on behind your wall, finding happiness and self-worth in other areas of your life. You can convince yourself that everything is exactly as it should be, that you’re fine, that you’re happy, that life is right on track.

Until one day someone stops and hears that beating heart, despite these thick walls that’s been put firmly into place. And they take a moment, maybe see who you really are, see what you can‘t see for yourself. And they make you smile, laugh. They make you care.

And you realize what it means to have someone want to break down that wall and discover the person underneath. You realize what it means to let yourself become vulnerable again, no matter what this outcome, though you already know it means something. And if it means something, it must be worthwhile.

So little by little, layer by layer, day by day, you begin to deconstruct that wall, finding the strength to let them in because you know it might be worth it. You know that they might be worth it. And all that time you spend trying to fight it is just wasted energy.

Because you’re worth the chance to have something good in your life, even if it’s only potential, no matter where it leads.

Even if it scares you.

Especially when it scares you.