For a long time I have avoided writing about the controversial topic of love. And when I say love, I mean the love that has existed in my life. I struggle to even think about my personal experience with it. Love—this elusive idea that many people spend their whole lives seeking. We all do it at some point. I know there are people who say they would rather be alone, but it’s in our nature to want to feel acceptance and mutual support. Humans crave that feeling, that person, that supposed happiness, so much so that we lose our sanity over it. Oh, Love, you weave a tragic, tangled web in the hearts of us all.

I have had mixed emotions concerning love since high school, so I knew I wasn’t ready to write about it just yet. Of course, I tried to. I wanted so badly to let go of my previous pain, however I was extremely unsuccessful. It took me a long time to admit I had lost faith in the power of love. I didn’t believe in soul mates, I couldn’t hear romantic love stories without grimacing and there was absolutely nothing I could do to convince myself that it was okay to fall in love again.

Whenever I tried to create a piece of writing that involved love, whether it was about my own encounter with it or a fictional story, I could never end on a positive note. I didn’t want to. Not that that was always a bad thing: I was letting go of the hurt and sadness inside of me but after a few years, I was tired of being angry. I didn’t want to feel so bitter about love any longer. It was incredibly frustrating because there was a time in my life when I thought love was the greatest force on Earth. I was once a hopeless romantic who wanted to fall desperately in love with someone and finally understand for myself what all the writers were talking about.

And I did. I grew up and I fell in crazy, stupid high school love with a boy who I thought strung the stars and the moon in the sky. I was blinded and insecure and I allowed it to affect every other aspect of my life. For far too long I subconsciously let him dictate who I was. I so badly wanted to be his ideal that I distorted myself into a whole different person, one I could hardly recognize. That relationship ended with immeasurable self-loathing, words that still hurt my soul each time I think of them, and a broken heart I thought I could never mend. My belief in love was diminished to almost extinction and I sealed every door to my heart shut with cement. I was only 18 and I had become a cynic.

I’m not blaming this boy, not in the slightest. We were both much too young to be so invested and I take full responsibility for the mistakes I know I made. I don’t regret any of it either because I learned a lot about the strength it takes to pull one’s self out of a self inflicting darkness. But now—thankfully and joyously and finally—I am free. I have been liberated from the pain and sadness that was strangling me for longer than I realized. Some much needed therapy, an ocean of remarkable people that have come into my life and two years later, I can write about love. It doesn’t hurt and I am rebuilding my belief in love. My heart feels whole again—as if I put the last broken pieces back together and I can take a breath without feeling an aching in my core. I haven’t felt this much like my true self since before I can remember and I am no longer afraid of what it might mean to open myself up to someone else.