just let me love you already

this was gonna be a zine post but well here we are / why do I always seem to post the most raw content on Sunday nights / maybe this should have stayed in a journal

first of all.. WOW THANK YOU for 100 subscribers omg. truly you all mean the world to me and I actually cannot wrap my head around this <3

I was originally planning to publish a zine which would have been more fun but alas here we are… That’ll be coming soon/next though and will provide a guide for slow looking in nature!

This post is going to be kind of a lot and certainly rambly. And I’m over sharing by pretty much any metric. But I am putting this out there just in case it finds even one person who relates or connects or finds hope from this. And in part because releasing it (and writing about it in the first place) might be helpful to me too.

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“Do you realize that I love you? Do you know you deeply you are cared for?” I sometimes want to scream through tears.

If you asked me what superpower I wanted, for most of my life I would have answered with something like “invisibility” or “reading minds.” But now I think I have a vastly different answer. It would be the ability to be able to fully and deeply communicate just how much love I have for people. Though at a deeper level I think it’s to ensure every single person knows that they are loved and cared for no matter what. There are some people in my life, both brand new and lasting friends, that I so desperately wish I could magically show just how much I care. To say, “you are seen, you are safe, it is ok to run to me for a hug, to call me in the middle of the night, to believe me when I say I’m proud of you even if you messed something up” and to have them actually feel it as deeply in their souls as I do.

I think somewhere along the way I’ve persuaded myself that if I could truly ensure/convince people that they are actually loved as they are it would ease some of the pain they experience, and that the knowledge that there was someone who wouldn’t give up on them would make the burdens a bit lighter. (Whether or not that’s actually true is a topic for another article.) This has meant that sometimes I hold onto dying friendships for too long. Or I pour myself into someone with little in return for years and years just because they said I was helpful or comforting before. And often ‘til there is nothing left, ‘til they have (all but) disappeared, because I fear that I wasn’t enough, that if I could just keep trying I would eventually find the right words to truly convince them of how deeply I love them. And yet I also fear that I am too much. That my attempts to show how deeply I care become overwhelming (and perhaps they have been on occasion, but I need to forgive myself for this especially because I was so young). Even so, I have a hard time believing that I’ve done much to help but instead spend most of my time dwelling on even the tiniest mistakes I’ve made in relationships. I’ve learned some of the reasons for these fears, no doubt.

There are, of course, many cases where I can see that the deep care has helped others. People have written me letters expressing their gratitude for my thoughtfulness. I’ve exchanged “I love you”s with friends often. It’s kept people on this earth on multiple occasions. I’ve encountered so many beautiful souls who have helped me become who I am, even if they aren’t still in my life.

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“Where does love go, when love is gone, to what war-torn cities?”

- Laurie Anderson (strange perfumes)

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Even after years of falling out of communication I still find myself praying that they would know the peace and love they so desperately wanted, even if for only a few seconds. Or writing letters to them that will never be sent. Or thinking of all of the silly little things we’d planned to do together that’ll never happen. But sometimes I also realize ways that letting go of someone has opened up the opportunity to meet and care for new people.

I often wonder what drives me to be this way, despite the fact that ultimately I wasn’t meant to keep up with every friend, and the fact that some people aren’t ready for what I give at the time. Maybe I just experienced so much pain at a young age that I wanted so badly to somehow give every last ounce of myself to make it hurt less for someone else. And maybe I had love (maybe even for myself) that didn’t have a home yet. There’s also the religious aspect of wanting to love as I’ve been loved¹ mixed in there. I also suspect that by pouring into people I somehow hoped that I would finally find someone who would give that deep connection or love that was so hard to find back to me. I think perhaps the more pain I was in (at least emotionally), or the more isolated I felt (partly thanks to a tiny high school), the more I found myself desperately trying to ensure others didn’t feel alone in theirs. This culminated in my high later high school years (and definitely when I’d spend time reaching out to countless people on Tumblr who were posting about how alone or depressed they were… no surprise that a Tumblr teen turned into a Substacker in their 20s heh).

For now, I am learning to put that same kind of love towards myself. To be gentle and present with others without the pressure that I need to attempt to bear any burden that they mention. To make the home I can return to inside of myself that is filled with love and forgiveness. To not harden myself and stop loving because of the evil in the world.

I still ask myself “why is it so easy to love other people no matter their story but so hard to love myself even at my best.” It is so ironic that I have a hard time believing in any kind of profound love from friends or in relationships myself, though I’m sure it’s mostly because the moments where I’ve been abandoned or love has felt conditional and transactional outweigh the security I feel from years of consistent friendship. My brain loves data and patterns, and when the data seem to suggest that people will leave me more often than not I’m inclined towards believing that even if they aren’t.

But, if I can exist and love this deeply, then others do too. I’ve made a lot of progress on that over the last few years, and I do find myself truly believing that some people care deeply about me. I hope I can help more people in my life believe that too.

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If you made it to the end, wow I appreciate you so much. And thank you for being here and reading as always<3

1. I could talk about the complex beauty of this for hours and how I wish it was more prominent in discussions of faith