I’m afraid to fall in love

Disclaimer: this is a vent post about what I have discovered while I was soul searching, and I decided to post it to see if anyone feels the same way as I do or has a similar story.

This isn’t about me falling in love and getting my heart brutally broken, even though that has happened. Truthfully, I have spent a very long time asking myself, why can’t I allow myself to be in love? Why is it that when I get close to someone, close enough to let my guard down and be vulnerable with someone I clam up and run away? I have spent hours evaluating my past relationships in my head, and I couldn’t find anything wrong. Of course I had my fair share of bad breakups and wasted tears, but nothing so horrible to make me visibly flinch away at the idea of being with someone long term.

And then I finally made the realization. I was afraid to fall in love because of the way I viewed my parent’s relationship.

Growing up as a child I had the notion that my parents were in love, that they were soulmates destined to be together. I was wrong about the soulmates part. My parents had split when I was 9-10 years old, but it wasn’t them splitting that made me come out this way, it was the way my parents had used me to get back at each other. And I’m not talking about, “oh my present is bigger than yours.” Or “She’s happier with me.” It was much worse.

When I had first gotten my phone I loved it, I thought I would never get one. But then it was used against me constantly, my father drunk calling me trying to get to my mother through me, and my mother stating, “if you pick up the phone for your father again I’m taking it away from you.” Why was I getting punished for something my father kept trying to do? This was the first of many negative “consequences” and I would only get more and more confused as time went on. And whenever I would try to open up to one of my parents, they would go behind my back and say, “see? She loves me more than you. She tells me more than she will ever tell you.” And then I would get chastised for it. “You say things to your father? Why don’t you ever talk to me? Why don’t we have a good mother daughter relationship?”

I remember making my mother cry a lot, because I refused to speak to her. I refused to let her into my life, and at some point in my mind we were no longer mother and daughter, but two people who live together and happened to share dna. I never told her how I felt, to this day she just thinks it was a product of teenage angst. Which it was. The fact that I was a teenager heightened my emotions, but also numbed me to my core. So numb where I couldn’t cry for years.

And you might be asking, what does this all have to do with you being afraid of falling in love? And the answer is, it has to do with everything. By looking at my relationship with my mother I was able to ask myself, why was it the way it was? And lead me to the evaluation of my relationship my parents had with each other. My parents were unhappy, they were in a toxic relationship. And even when they had broken up they stilled managed to stay in that same relationship. My mother was forced to speak to him, she was forced to see him, and instead of letting it out on him she turned around and spat it all on me. Without even realizing it.

As you can probably tell from the little detail I let you in on my father, he had done some pretty messed up things. And she would always go back to him in some way or form. Even when he treated her horribly, even when he treated her children horribly. And when I asked my mother why she would keep going back to the one person who has caused her so much pain and heartache and drained her on a daily basis, she would simply tell me, “I was in love.”

Those words, though I didn’t know it, instilled a fear in me. I had always heard the quote, “love is blind.” Which had only deepened my fear. I don’t want to be blinded by love, I don’t want to be so deeply in love that when they show their true colors I won’t have the strength or the will to leave. I can’t be involved with someone romantically, I just can’t. I don’t have it in me to be vulnerable, to show every piece of my soul to someone who could potentially pollute it.

But then again, I want to be in love so badly. To laugh so hard my stomach hurts, to be so happy I cry, to have a bounce in my step and look up at the sky and feel giddy at the thought of someone having me on their mind.

I’m not sure what I can do to change this, it was a journey to even reach this far and find the answers for myself. But I did it, which is the first, very crucial step. And if you’re having trouble, I know you can do it!

Stella✨

#unaesthetic #shareyourthoughts #embracevulnerability