In love I had lost hope

Before I met you, I wondered if love would ever find me. I wondered if I was worthy of that kind of attention and admiration. Did I even know what love was? Would I recognize it if it showed up at my doorstep? I watched my parents thrive, the perfect couple, together since they were 15, married at 19, children at 22. They have been together for over 25 years and are perfectly happy. My father wakes up early every Saturday and makes my mother breakfast in bed. When they argue, my dad comes home with my mother’s favorite candy and soda. My mom will spend all day working from home in her pj’s, but when she knows my father is coming home, she will do her hair and makeup. Not because my father expects it or wants it but because my mother wants to feel pretty for him.
I watch as she stares at him from across the room, or he watches her sleep and looks up at me with pure joy and whispers, “isn’t she the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen.” I spent my entire childhood and adolescent years looking for this. I searched in places I regret exploring. I begged men who loved only themselves to love me. Soon I lost hope. I lost faith in love. I began to think I was destined to be alone. That my destiny was to only be loved by myself. Something that I feared would never be possible. Then one day in the most unexpected way, I met you. All I could think about was you. I saw your name appear on my phone and I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to hear your voice as we spent hours on Skype. I told the world about you. A few weeks into meeting you, I began opening up about things that I feared anyone ever knowing. I remember not being able to look at you. Scared of what your face would say. It took all the strength I had to be able to look up at you. Your eyes were filled with something I had never seen. A look that I had seen my parents give each other many times but no man had ever given to me. I heard you whisper that you loved me, and my heart filled with joy and pain. How could someone like you love something like me? I didn’t say it back immediately. I needed time to think. Not about whether or not I loved you, but whether or not I wanted to put my heart out there.
I had told many men before that I loved them but never once meant it. These were just empty words said only to keep the interest of these men. I did not want you to be like that. I wanted us to be different. I needed us to be different. You brought back hope in the world, love, and myself that I had lost years ago. You made me not only start to love myself again, but love who once was. You supported my every dream and wished only to see me smile. You made me have hope in love again. You made me have hope in myself.

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