A Quest to Feel Loved

 

Last night in conversation, she said since she found God, she has been filled with an intense feeling of love. (I can’t remember her exact words.) I am glad for her, but my immediate feeling for myself was the pressures of what love entails, the gives and takes, and the fear I’m not willing to give enough or giving more than I get in return. (Does this also mean a part of me believes I’m terrible at love and don’t deserve love?)

Love has been an issue I’ve been in a quandary over for many years. I touch on it from time to time, then can’t find the right words and am unable to really figure it out, so I give up on it. I’ve been so badly damaged by past love that I don’t ever dare to fully trust love again, and I’ve built very strong walls to not let it in.

Oh, how do I explain? Yes, I know how to love. (Or do I? If I really knew how to love, and let myself feel loved, would I be having this issue?) It’s easy for me to say I love Pele-kitty, Leo-kitty, flowers, nature, birds, painting, writing, etc. It’s almost like I shy away from loving people.

But I do love many people. I say, “I love you,” to family and friends, and I truly mean it, and they tell me so in return. But there’s a feel of distance, like something is held back. I hold back. I’m the one who distances.

Part of it is a stupid belief that love (outside of family) and sex are intermingled. I don’t like feeling that way and in trying to figure it out, all I can reason is that, in my younger adult years, that’s what love seemed to mean. I’ve been trying to come to terms with this over for over 40 years. It even seems stupid to feel this way, and probably no one else sees it this way, but I can’t seem to get over this. Is there something within me that by believing this protects me from further hurt?

I want to be loved, to feel love. It’s not anyone else’s fault I don’t feel it. I’ve come so far in being me, accepting myself for who I am, and yes, loving me, but there’s a piece missing. That feeling of truly being loved and the warmth and the comfort it brings about. Logically I know others love me but emotionally I don’t feel loved. (And again, my mind says that’s stupid.)

Is it being alone? But I choose to be alone. I can’t imagine ever living with anyone else ever again. But can’t I live alone and still FEEL loved by friends and family?

 Who knows, maybe by writing about this occasionally, I’ll finally get it.

Oh my, and now I just got this revelation: This issue of not feeling loved escalated after my mum passed away Christmas Day 2011. That was when I was truly alone, and that the only person who really, ever totally loved me was gone.