When you fall for someone, you don’t know about their past and you couldn’t care less about their future. You choose not to pry, and you choose not to expect. You just fall. You just love. You just embrace the present and go with the flow.
You tell yourself that love is all you need to keep the relationship afloat. You build a bubble of your own, in which you decide to reside for as long as time allows. You feel safe and for some time you trick your mind and heart into believing that no hurricane will ever sweep you off your ground.
But to love at all is to be vulnerable.
To love means that you’re susceptible to suffering from heartaches and getting blows from directions you were not expecting. To love also means that you’ll be part of your partner’s share of lows even when you never signed up for it. To love means that you will be dragged into situations that you didn’t even know could have, would have existed. To love means that you can’t escape certain scenarios and that worse, they will haunt you down even if you were a mere passive observer.
Yes, to love means to accept your lover for all they are. And to accept your lover for all they are means to be open to any ache that will come your way because of who they are and what they did. Because to love at all means to stand by the one human being that means the world to you.
But, to love also means to take your stance. To know when to separate yourself from the other person. To know what was your fault and what wasn’t.
To love means to provide support but not weaken your own limbs in the process. It means to be there, but not at the cost of losing yourself. To love means to help your partner get rid of the toxic but not without making sure that you are immune to it. It means to help your partner up when their head’s underwater but not drown with them.
To love at all is to be vulnerable, but that doesn’t mean you walk around bumping on walls and tripping over stones that are in plain sight. It doesn’t mean helping their wounds heal while yours go unattended.
Because to love doesn’t mean closing your senses. If anything, to love at all means just the opposite and if you can’t begin to protect yourself you will never be able to protect your significant other.
To love also means to know when to say goodbye. Because there’s a thing called “too late.”
The Red Loafers 