“Is Love Worth It?”

As I listened to a heart felt break down about the strenuous back and forth of emotions on the subject of love from a very respected and dear friend of mine. I was asked this question. “Is love really worth it?”

At the time it killed me to have to respond with “I do not think I am in the right state of mind when it comes to love to answer this question and be much help to you and afraid I’ll give ill advisement.”

The question came in about the sacrifices we make of ourselves when it comes to love, how much of ourselves we lose and give away in the process of loving another. Especially when it’s not reciprocated. For whatever reasons.

Not all love is like this but I feel majority can agree to some point and can relate from their own past experiences.

With the current state of my marriage and what was happening with my friend at the time. Not wanting to give ill advice by projecting my current state of mind, body and spirit on the matter of love. I had to sit and think on this for a while.

First I had to recognize the current state of my being. What I found was I whole heartedly was engulfed in pain, anger, grief, and I know from past experience that I need to sit with these emotions so I don’t act in haste because that causes waste.

In sitting with my friend’s pain as tears poured and I could not answer the question from my state. This bothered me so I had to step away from what I was feeling and going through personally to just think. Think about this question, think about past loves, and experiences, and this is what I came up with.

Is love worth it?

Whole heartedly, absolutely one hundred percent, the answer is YES.

Why? Well, for me I do not believe in regrets. I believe having regrets hinders forgiveness and the growth process. If you are blindly consumed by living in guilt, grief, pain, sorrow, anger, rage regretting the time “wasted” you miss the opportunity to grow. The cycle will continue, and your next partner will be collateral damage while you fight the demons of your past.

Love is always a gamble. It’s give and take; sometimes more of one than the other. It’s sacrifice, compromise, having the hard talks, it’s putting up with shit you’d never dream of putting up with from a stranger but you would for the one you love.

What I found to be the hardest most bitter sweet truth about love but my personal belief in regardless of how it turns out of why it’s worth it.

Loving someone is looking in the mirror and sometimes it’s not always pretty. It challenges you to be better. For yourself and for the companionship. Someone to show you where you should have boundaries, where to say no, where to say I deserve better, and when to act on it. Or simply learning to love yourself. It’s not always rainbows and butterflies and it’s not always meant to last. But what will last is the lessons they brought you. The opportunities to grow, change become a better version of yourself. That only that one person regardless of the outcome was able to show you and teach you. That in itself makes it worth it.

You can have many loves in a lifetime and find all the challenges before were to simply teach you to appreciate the right one when they come along.

Sometimes love is only two people falling in-love with each other’s demons. A dark toxic ring around the Rosie of vile verbal vomit and trading blow for blow.

Sometimes love is just your best friend and sometimes you out grow each other.

Now I am speaking mostly of the negatives but in a manner I am not because regardless of the love lost there will always be love found again. Even in 1 single ending relationship, friendship, death, marriage, whatever. There is always something you will take with you that shows you how to better love yourself.

I don’t believe you can truly love someone and it just disappears. The chord/soul tie is always there.  It may have been a rough toxic vile connection but through forgiveness and understanding you can clean that chord to draw out the lessons learned while being grateful for everything you learned and have become from that person.

From the measly 41 years of being this planet I have also come to learn and believe to be true is that you cannot truly love another unless you love yourself. That most loves ,regardless of forms, shapes and sizes are mirrors for you to heal and learn that loving yourself is more important than staying in something that is not meant and aligned for you. That letting go and walking away is the best thing you can do. That the worst pain I feel there is in love lost is the take back of what you gave so freely to someone who didn’t reciprocate it. Whatever that may look like and it’s always different in every bucket of love, soul tie, friendships, relationships all of them.

If it took the pain of a love leaving/dissolving/dissipating for one to turn in, heal and love themselves just a little bit more than it’s 100 percent worth it.

Like this conversation showing me that in midst of my own cauldron of shit I was drowning in, that when blind by our emotions it’s hard to see how our hearts are in fact boundless.

For that, thank you *bows head in honor, respect and gratitude.