It takes time to realize, but love is all around us.
Why do I say this? As I have been thinking about my life and the daily experience of others I see that often we close ourselves off to the possibility of love and don’t even realize it.
For example, when I was younger a few people were interested in me. I was not ready for a relationship and didn’t want to live in the state that I grew up in. So I didn’t allow those relationships to happen because most people find it hard to separate from their family, and that would only complicate my plans to leave the state.
Was I wrong for doing so? Could those women have wanted to move with me and should I have given them a chance? That question doesn’t matter because it is the past. I am not sorry about the decisions I made. I did what I had to do. We can’t question our past, but we can learn from it.
Years later some of those women contacted me when I was briefly a member of Facebook. This isn’t to brag, just to provide a point. One that I had a relationship with said that the guy she choose instead of me was a dud and she hated her marriage/life. I of course empathized with her. The other woman asked why we never dated. I told her that she was out of my league. She was special and I did think about it, but I pushed it aside because I enjoyed her friendship and didn’t want to ruin it. That is what I told myself at the time.
The truth was that I was scared. Scared that she might love me and that it might derail my plans to leave the state. I couldn’t take the chance. I hated living in a place where I felt the ignorance and apathy was overwhelming. If I had understood my fears better at the time, I could have been more open to her and other opportunities that I had.
Again this is not nostalgia. I am not wishing my past was different. I love the timeline I am on. I am saying that at all times in our lives, people are around who want to know us and love us and we don’t give them the opportunity. I saw this in dating as well. Women would contact me after breaking up with me and say they made a mistake, and I said I am sorry but I don’t give second chances. Love is either you are all in, or it is nothing.
If you aren’t being loved, the problem isn’t the world, it is yourself.