For The First Time In Years, I Am Ready To Love Again
Even after all the heartbreak I've had in my life, I'm still open and willing to love hard.
By Mitzi J Hernandez
As I lay here at night alone with my thoughts, I find myself craving for touch. Not physical touch, I want more than a man touching my naked body.
The last time I was in love was years ago. I almost remember how it felt to hold someone and never want to let them go.
For the last few years I have been single. I’ve dated but have definitely not been remotely close to opening my heart to anyone. After my last relationship I told myself that I would never love again.
I thought emotions were signs of weakness. The sheer terror of getting hurt and being heartbroken again was so overwhelming.
The minute I felt any real emotion with anyone, I put up a wall and then ran in the opposite direction.
Love was so long ago. Most days, I don’t think about it too much.
I enjoy my life: I have a job, I have my own house, I’m healthy, I have amazing friends, and I live comfortably.
Some days, it weighs on me. These thoughts always creep into my head at night and I think about how nice it would be if I had someone who wanted to hold me.
I wonder when I will meet someone who feels the same way.
However, somewhere in these past months of truly being alone and doing some major soul searching, I realized with no small amount of trepidation that I am finally ready to love someone again if the right person came along.
For the first time, I realize that I am not scared anymore.
I want to have someone who will stay up with me at night so we can talk about our days, and someone who will always be there for me. Someone who will love my soul, not just my body.
I want a man that can touch my soul and a man that will awaken my deepest desires that I have kept locked away deep in my heart.
After much needed soul searching, I am emotionally available. I am now willing to be vulnerable and honest with my feelings for another person, and I am willing to allow someone else to get close to me and know the real me, bruises, scars, and all.
I’m willing and able to put myself out there and not play games.
I am ready to love again... because my heart has healed.
I’ve learned that with each break, with each sting of pain, our hearts are able to expand and strengthen our capacity to love more and more. We are wired for connection and wired for love.
Even after all the heartbreak I’ve had in my life, I’m still open and willing to love hard and love big again.
I’m someone who wears her heart on her sleeve, and dives in, heart and soul in hand when I’m falling for someone. I don’t hold back.
I am willing to risk it all.
Even though I came out of a relationship hurt time and again, I grew, and I learned. Loving is always a risk, but it is an even bigger risk not to love. It is an even bigger risk to close ourselves off and shut down.
I’ve learned to love a little bigger and a little harder each and every time.
I am ready to feel again.
I just know that something is missing and want to feel loved by someone and I want to be caress by someone.
It is my hope that someday, I’ll feel something amazing with someone. And I know that it’s going to happen one day, because that’s one of the things I truly want in my life — to share it with someone.
I want to dream again, to feel again, to laugh again, breathe again, to dance again, to hold someone’s hand again, romance again. I want to love again.
I have been broken over and over again, yet still, I have the capacity in my heart to give more of myself.
After all this time I still have so much love to give. I have more love to give today after my multiple broken hearts than before that last soul-crushing heartache.
Loving big and loving hard is not a defect. I have more than what most people could hope to find in a partner. I have more patience, loyalty, passion, kindness, and most of all I have more love to give.
Here I am once again, willing to risk it all for love.
I am ready to love again.
Mitzi J Hernandez is a freelance writer whose work has been published in El Sol de México, Thought Catalog, YourTango, Unwritten, El Heraldo de Chihuahua, El Sol de Zacatecas, and more. For more of her work, follow her on Twitter.