I am the one who didn’t know how to love, and I’m no longer ashamed to say it.
We met in the simplest way: mutual friends, casual conversations. Nothing dramatic. Back then, I was a contained mess, trying to keep everything under control because it was the only way I knew how to move forward.
Love seemed like a scam to me. Something people used to hurt each other and then blamed fate for it. I saw it everywhere—people destroying themselves in the name of love—and I swore to myself that I would never be one of them again.
So I learned to run. To keep my distance. To convince myself that love was for the weak, for those who didn’t know how to be alone. And for a while, it worked. Or so I thought. The emptiness was still there, growing every time I refused to feel.
When I did allow myself to love, I did so from chaos. From the turmoil I refused to acknowledge. I obsessed, I lost myself in stories that only existed in my head, I became everything I swore I never would: the intense one, the one who didn’t know how to set boundaries, the one who felt too much.
I spent years torturing myself with what ifs. Replaying every scene, every message, every moment where I could have acted differently. I hated myself for not being better, for not knowing how to control my emotions, for being too much… everything.
But time and therapy taught me that there are no shortcuts to learning how to love (yourself). That every mistake led me here. That all those past versions of myself, no matter how chaotic, were necessary to reach this peace.
And then we met. He appeared—not as a magical solution, not as a savior—but as someone who simply chose to stay. Someone who wasn’t scared of my broken parts. Who never asked me to be different.
Now, love is something else. It’s being able to breathe without feeling like I’m drowning. It’s not having to measure every word, every gesture. It’s existing without asking for permission.
Sometimes I think about that past version of myself, the one who believed she was broken and unforgivable. The one who thought she had to earn the right to be loved. The one who mistook drama for passion and believed that love had to hurt to be real.
If I could talk to her, I’d tell her that every step of the journey was worth it. That her mistakes don’t define her. That she deserved to be loved even when she didn’t know how to love herself. That peace didn’t come from the perfect love, but from the love she learned to give herself.
Mel Bruja 