Love In The Dark
It’s 12:03 AM and sleep evades me. My mind churns with anxieties, tangled in thoughts of overdue bills and mounting debts. Each notification of an unpaid bill feels like a heavy weight, pushing me into a corner of vulnerability I’ve never known before. The fear of being unable to meet even basic needs is unsettling and humbling.
Yet, within this unsettling chaos, clarity begins to surface. I am finally seeing the consequences of my actions and the choices I made without fully understanding its severity. Despite the turmoil and suffering I experienced, it feels as though this difficult chapter is shaping me, and the beginning to something better.
For too long, I’ve been trapped in a cycle of self-doubt and negativity. Accepting that I could be loved seemed like an impossible feat, something that’s perhaps reserved exclusively for some others. Maybe these feelings took root the day my father made me feel a sense of abandonment, imprinting a deep sense of void in my soul. But there comes a moment when I must choose to let go of these childhood trauma and step forward. At some point, blaming my predicament on past memories becomes nothing short of an excuse to behave the way I do. It’s excruciatingly exhausting to carry such old pain around every day when all I need to do is simply let go and move on.
It feels as though I’m standing at the lowest point of my life, yet strangely, hope accompanies me through this darkness. Perhaps this is precisely what I needed to experience in order to change. Unexpectedly, it’s in this moment of hopelessness that I’ve come to see that I am deeply loved. Friends have provided unconditional genuine care, stepping up in ways I never expected. My family offers support that feels like an embrace, comforting and reassuring in its sincerity. Reflecting on these moments fills me with immeasurable gratitude and hope that I had forgotten existed.
As I write these words from my bed tonight, those haunting thoughts of despair have begun to slowly fade. I realize that my long-held beliefs about being unloved were unfounded fears rooted in past trauma. No one explicitly told me I didn’t deserve love. I told myself that because I feared rejection. I feared abandonment again. This difficult journey has taught me that love and support surround me, if only I choose to see and accept it. If it takes pain and suffering to acknowledge the fact that I’m loved, I would gladly go through this predicament over and over again. Because that’s the price I’m willing to pay to be let loose from the chains that withheld me from acknowledging love.
All it takes is opening our hearts to the love already present in our lives. It won’t be easy but it will come. We all deserve kindness, compassion, and genuine connections, no matter how deep our struggles might be. Self-hatred is the enemy of joy. We all deserve to love and be loved, don’t forget that.