This Fish has a beautiful post on love today.
That’s the part about love that’s always been hard for me – stepping outside of my own security, to take a chance at humiliation to show I care. But I’m learning as I get older that it’s not about me. It’s about dropping defenses… exposing previously hidden faults and letting people hear me say, “this is how you know I love you.â€
Someone recently told me I’m a bit of a mystery and hard to get to know – and that’s probably true. I rarely let people in very far. It takes me a long time to drop my defenses, and just be there to let someone accept me as I really, truly am – which is really what love is all about.
It’s easy to shut down and say no to love. I’ve done it for so very long. But what kind of life is that? I’ll tell you, it’s one that I’m sick of living. My family deserves more. My friends deserve more. I deserve more.
So to all of the people in my life that are so special to me, I promise that I will start to try harder to open up – to let you know I love you. Because I get the feeling that in return, I’ll probably find out that you love me too.
A difficult and courageous decision, and one I’ve been dealing with too. For me, I try to think about the times when I’ve taken the risk and it’s paid off (my wife and my better-than-best friend, for two). Those times FAR outweigh any pain I’ve suffered when it *didn’t* work out. I hope you find the same kind of success, and all the love and happiness you deserve.
I love you, too! 🙂
I think it’s tough to open up like that, because personally I never know when someone is wanting “more of me” in their life. I always figure that if people are curious about me, they’ll ask – and if they want to talk about something personal to them, they’ll do so, so I never ask if I think it’s a sensitive topic. This of course leaves me with rather superficial friendships… so I have to work on that too.