Love, No Thanks

This is one topic I absolutely hate yet here I am writing about it. Why, must you ask? Well, because I don't quite understand why people choose love in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I know love is a beautiful thing, but the new, so-called love is not good at all. It's just a bunch of lies; it holds no depth whatsoever. It's an empty word, and it's so sad how it's turned from something so beautiful to something so painful and ugly that everyone is afraid of it. I am awfully terrified of falling in love.

As a little girl, you see love as this wonderful thing between your parents. You see them respect each other, care for one another and constantly kiss and hug one other. Unless you grew up like me and all you saw was your mother constantly cheating on your stepdad and them always fighting and bickering at each other. You see your mom try to kill herself because some guy didn't want to be with her, and she was too heartbroken to get out of bed. I'm not saying this is why I don't want love. I'll explain that later, but seeing this will definitely make you question love.

As you get older, you start to realize that love is about finding someone to protect you and comfort you, to find a person who knows you have flaws but loves you anyway. It's about two people coming together and being each other's strength and just having a partner to enjoy life with. When you meet someone you connect with all you want to do is be kind to that person and make them happy every day for the rest of your lives. But love is one-sided, so just because you feel that way about a person doesn't mean they're going to feel the same. This is where love becomes tricky and painful.

I fear love because I don't like being hurt, and I'm so afraid someone isn't going to love me back and that is terrifying. I've been on the opposite end of this, my ex-husband loved me, but I didn't love him. I never cared about his feelings. I only cared about myself, but I didn't want to be alone so I just pretended I was in love with him. And that is what's wrong with this world right now. Everyone is so selfish, everyone is so wrapped up in their own feelings and their own happiness that they fail to realize there's another person's feelings involved.

People are constantly saying "I love my phone, I love my car, and I love my toys," and they'd be devastated if something happened to any of their precious items. We give our toys more attention than we do human connection. We feel more secure with a phone in our hand than we do with our significant other's hand in ours. We'd rather entertain someone on social media than give attention to our own children. Real connections have been lost and replaced with a fantasy world, and yet everyone complains about being so lonely.

People want love, but they don't want to work for it. If there's a problem in their relationship they just throw the whole relationship away instead of fixing the minor issue. I had a guy once ask me, "Would you rather buy a brand new fancy home, fully equipped with everything you've ever wanted, or would you rather fix the home you're already in with flaws and minor issues that you could fix yourself and make it exactly how you wanted?" I think about this question quite often, and I would never want to buy something already put together; I like doing things on my own and making sure it's exactly right. The same thing applies to relationships. He told me to quit looking for someone who is already perfect and find someone who is as damaged as me and fix ourselves together.

The problem with trying to do this is everyone says they want this but they put in zero effort to have it. They talk about it all day long and post memes on social media but they never do anything about it. It's so much easier to just entertain ten different people at once and let them fill the empty holes. Your spouse gets on your nerves, open up Facebook messenger and bam: There's 20 people lined up wanting your attention. You feel wanted and appreciated for a moment, but those moments always go away when you turn your phone off. So you're left there with the guilt of cheating and you still feel empty because you didn't fix the problem you were having in your own relationship. Instead, you made it worse because now you see yourself as a cheater.

This is the reality of new age love, and it's one I cannot support or get behind. I refuse to be caught up in a world where love is just a word and is no longer an actual feeling. So when I say I don't want love, I mean it. The only way I'll ever allow it in my life is if this world changes and people go back to the true meaning of love. Until then, I'll avoid it at all costs and continue to post my heartless memes.