Perhaps, love is about learning how to be alone

Self-care is an act of community care. Boundaries are necessary for self-preservation.you deserve the same love and care that you give to others.  We ought to normalize not showing up empty and depleted in our lives and relationships.

Normalize honoring yourself, protecting your space and filling your cup so that you can be present, intentional and aligned. Not just for yourself but also for the greater good of our communities.

The love you find within yourself will be yours forever. And maybe when it comes down to it,love is not about chasing another human being, love is all about chasing yourself. Chasing your growth, chasing your hope.

Love is about learning how to be gentle with yourself, how to believe in the way the world has removed certain people from your life. Perhaps love grows within you when you learn how to trust your own heart, when you learn how to walk away from the things that have not cared for it.

Perhaps love is about learning how to accept that sometimes even beautiful things end, that sometimes the timing is not right. And maybe love is about learning that endings are not something to regret. Perhaps it is about learning how to gently let go, how to appreciate the things you have experienced at the hands of caring that were real and hopeful and light in a world that sometimes fails to be soft.

Perhaps, love is about learning how to be alone. Perhaps it is about learning how to wake up in the middle of the bed. How to make just one cup of coffee in the morning. How to hold your own heart, how to take up space. Perhaps there is beauty to be discovered in falling in love with your growth, in learning how to stop filling voids with other human beings and instead in slowly having the courage to heal those voids yourself.

Perhaps love exists in the way you fight to be here. In the way you crash your heart into this world. Love is about you, being your own strength, being your own safe place. When it comes down to it, love is about finally learning to give yourself the same love you so beautifully give to others.

Love is about you embracing the person you are becoming and believing in your heart even on your hardest of days and fully forgiving yourself.

Perhaps love is about learning how to be proud of the person you are stretching into. It’s about embracing the beauty and the depth that exists in trying for something while you are here. Perhaps within that, love is about honoring your heart.

Perhaps the truest and most honest extension of love exists in the way you learn how to love yourself, it exists in the way you learn how to be compassionate towards the part of yourself and your journey, that no one else applauds for.

Forgive yourself for giving your heart to people who could not love it or value it. Forgive yourself for falling for the wrong people because at the end of the day, they were not the wrong people. You were meant to meet them, to experience them, to learn the lessons that you learnt.

You do not have to regret the way you put your heart into this world. You do not have to beat yourself up for caring  and for hoping that something beautiful you felt with other people would turn into something real, tangible and pointed.

Be proud of the person you have become. Be proud of the way you have loved. Be proud of the way  you chose vulnerability and tenderness, how you never stopped choosing them regardless of what your soul experienced. Be proud of the way you fought to be seen and understood. Be proud of the way you tried your best to speak beauty into the parts of them that no one else clapped for, be proud of the way you cared.

Be proud of the way you showed up. Of the way you existed here. The way you dedicated yourself to living the kind of life that allowed for happiness and sadness and growth to flow through you like rain. Be proud of yourself for the way you fell in love with a version of hope that you created from the deepest parts of your soul.

Be proud of the fact that you never let your past convince you that you did not deserve the potential the future was holding for you. Be proud of the way you moved in the direction of love. Be proud of the way you risked your soul. Be proud of the way you honored it.

At the end of it all, when you leave this world, leave with a heart that is worn out and tender all over, a heart that arches from loving and feeling and caring in the best way possible. Leave knowing that you poured love into everything that you did. That you crashed your soul into each day and that you tried for something while you were here. Just be proud of the person that you have become and how you connected.