I suffer from one of the greatest afflictions this world has to offer: I have a big heart. It doesn't matter if I've known you ten years or ten minutes, if you give me a reason to believe your worth my time, I'll give it to you. If I let you in, I will genuinely care for you. I'm a bleeding heart.

It is without a doubt the quality people have taken advantage of the most in my life. After all, it's easy to exploit the girl who will give herself selflessly because she cares while you slide through the relationship with as little effort as possible. Maybe you think that makes me naive. I know people who have thought having a big heart makes me weak and have done everything in their power to show me time and time again. Hell, I used to think I was weak.

I know better now.

See, you look at my heart and see all the ways I've let people use me. You take into account the relationships I've fallen hard and fast into only to get my heart broken. You see the friends I've let stab me in the back. You see the second and third and fourth chances I hand out like candy to a first-grader and assume that I do all this because I'm some naive idiot who never learns her lesson.

You're wrong.

I carry every broken promise and sleepless night with me. I hold tight to the pretty words I've been fed by the spoonful and the lies I've accepted even though they were total bullshit. I remember the friendships that fell apart and the new relationships that didn't pan out. I fall and fall again and with every scrape and bruise received, I always seem to run right back for more. I'm a walking cautionary tale, but I never seem to change. Why?

Well, the next time you judge me or shake your head, ask yourself this: What if the quality most assume to be my biggest weakness is actually my greatest strength?

What could possibly demonstrate strength of character more than the girl who refuses to stop loving just because she's been hurt? I could easily add up all the snakes I've met in my garden and the lies they've told me, divide it by the number of times I've had my heart broken or been used and come to the conclusion that it just isn't worth it to love so openly. I could box up my cold dead heart and shove it in a corner somewhere. I could walk around preaching the "fuck feelings" sermon like the best of them; build a wall around myself and refuse to let anyone in.

That would make me weak.

I'm not stupid. I know there are people out there with less than my best interest at heart. I know there are people who see a walking target like myself and count up the number of ways they can screw around with my thoughts and feelings. I know these people exist, but I refuse to let that steal my belief that there are good people out there, too. If I spent all my time holed up believing the world was out to get me, I might miss out on some of the best it has to offer.

So I see the good in people despite them showing me their worst. I give the benefit of the doubt, more often than I should, because I want to believe that, at their core, people aren't actually all that bad. I give out second and third and fourth chances because I want to believe that people change. I'll listen to your sob story, the millions of excuses you have for the way you've acted and feel genuine sympathy for you. I'll let you lie and cheat and steal the shirt off my back because I care.

I feel sorry for people who have let heartbreak and missed opportunities break them. People who have let past relationships and their mistakes make them cold and hardened to the world around them. It makes me sick to think of people who treat others like they don't matter in the name of some failed vendetta against whoever wronged them.

I refuse to become one of these people.

Maybe that means I get my heart broken more often than the average person. Maybe that means I spend more time crying alone in my room than I should. Maybe it means I'll never learn my lesson. Maybe it means I'm empathetic and stupid, but I'm sure as hell not weak.

So I'll continue to love. I'll continue to give to others and hope, but not expect, that they'll do the same for me. I'll watch as people come and go from my life and know that the one's who stay are the one's who really matter. I'll treat the people who let me down not as a cautionary tale against love and life, but as a lesson learned. I will never let myself forget that as ugly as this world and the people in it can be, there is still so much beauty to be found. I will not let my downfalls keep the smile from my face.

My heart may be big and that may provide more space for cracks and bruises, but it provides a lot of room for genuine love and laughter, too.