I’ve always found myself to be a hard lover. A deep lover. An extremely intense passionate being. I’ve loved a thousand times in a million different ways, but my 20s really exposed me to so many different levels of love. It even brought me to the point of disbelief in love at first sight. Of falling in love. The redemption of love.
The start of my 20s found me in stubborn love. I’m notorious for not quitting things, a lot of the times in my past, to my detriment. I’m a lesson learner. I mistook my name for Florence Nightingale. I felt like my love and space was the great healer. I could cure any inability to treat me exactly like I deserved. I let him call the shots. I lost myself. I gained too much weight. I became a shadow of the lover I always thought I would be. While I was growing and growing in my confirmation of the type of adult I would undoubtedly become, I allowed the most precious private parts of me to be mistreated in one slight way or another. I became a jealous person. I became a snoop. I became untrusting.
Then I learned to get myself together again. I saw me again. And I stepped away from that situation.
After that, I was still a bit shaken up but strapped with years of emotional experience in my bag I marched forward. Looking back, one thing I will always be proud of is my ability to give everyone a full and fair chance. I didn’t allow whatever a person did to me or I allowed to have done negatively affect a new relationship.
There were some duds and some became great friends that I love dearly. But with each new experience my intuition became stronger and I learned to stop questioning and doubting that force within me. I trusted when I was presented something not quite right. I’ve had eerie visions in the past and done some extreme things (taking a plane ride to prove a point?). I’m a protected woman of conviction, what can I say?
Luckily for me, these were all short lived experiences and I met the man I’d marry in my mid 20s. Even that threw me for a loop, because I met him when I definitely was not interested in a relationship and felt myself growing exponentially in my singleness and he happened to be everything I was looking for when I wasn’t looking. And it was everything it should be: whirlwind, cosmic, electric, magnetic, other worldly, and sober. All at once.
I started my 20s in a place I never in a million years thought I should be and ended it in a place I never thought actually possible, despite my tendency to dream. My 20s taught me to always believe in love. To know there’s nothing wrong with loving hard. To never feel spurned when things don’t work out how you thought, because right around the corner there is a reward awaiting you. A reward so positive, it will overshadow all the negative you may have previously experienced. A reward that will be so fulfilling, you’ll no longer need to think about the past. All you’ll think about is right now. And tomorrow.
I’ll talk about a different kind of love another time. What have you learned about love in your 20s? Any gems you care to share? Leave them in the comments section.
[This is a post in a series on lessons I've learned in my twenties. Read the first and second posts.]
Photo belong to me. Please do not repost at all. Thank you.
Pin It
