Pitfalls of a Brave Heart

You were in love.

Nothing can diminish that.

You gave your heart to another, trusted them to keep it and gave your word that you would be true, because you were. You took them at their word because you believed in something, someone, other than yourself.

Nothing can belittle the courage that took.

Even if that love wasn’t returned on anything more than a superficial level. 

Perhaps the other person wasn’t capable of giving you any more than that.

Loving when the love is returned in equal proportion is, one would assume, an easier task—though still daunting, I’m sure. Such responsibility.

Yet, you loved.

You may feel your relationship was built on, and destroyed by, lies. Though, to be honest with yourself, it was the truth that dealt the final blow. The lies just weakened it enough to make it a fatal one.

Maybe the one you loved gave their heart, body and soul to another, and then, another, while still smiling at you and telling you they loved you because that was what was easiest for them.

Still, you loved.

It may have been that their lies and cheating made you lose yourself. Your pain made you hurtful, your insecurity made you jealous, the person who’d brought out the best in you suddenly brought out the worst. You may have felt shattered, ground down, almost destroyed.

It’s okay. You loved.

If it’s easy to leave, you had no place being there to begin with.

If the wound takes years to heal because it cut as deeply as you felt, that is to be expected.

Sometimes the forest needs to burn to make way for new growth.

If the love you thought true turned out to be an illusion, but the void it left was real and you fell into it, and it into you, and the darkness still threatens to consume, hold on, you’ll get through.

Because, you loved.

If you feel that the person you fell in love with never truly existed. Not as you thought you knew them. That they were only playing a cruel game of pretended. If the marriage ended in divorce or you had the vows dissolved by an annulment but like salt in water it isn’t really gone, the water is just left undrinkable, try and recall how sweet it tasted before it was tainted. That was all you. 

You were the one who loved.

That fact shall remain.

You gave your heart to another, trusted them to keep it and gave your word that you would be true, because you were.

Nothing can ever belittle the courage that took.

Nothing can diminish that.

Someday, when your courage returns, so will love. An older love. A wiser love. One that is equally brave.

If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too.

Because you loved.

And no one can take that from you.