I Wish My Parents Taught Me More About Love

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I wish my parents showed me a kind of love I can hope for, a kind of love I can follow, an example to look up to. I wish they gave me a good picture I can try to repaint. I wish they gave me some sort of model for how love is supposed to be.

I wish they gave me something to understand about love instead of leaving me trying to find it and failing, instead of leaving me with expectations and fantasies in my head that might not even be real.

I wish they talked to me more about how they fell in love instead of ripping each other apart. I wish they told me what I deserved instead of warning me about falling in love because it only leads to heartbreak.

I wish they didn’t make love look so terrifying, so dark and so revolting.

I wish they told me the love I’m looking for exists instead of laughing at me for dreaming about it.

I wish they didn’t feed me all these ‘truths’ about love and marriage and just talked to me more about the beauty of love, the comfort of commitment and the strength of being two instead of one.

I wish I wasn’t the only one in my family who still believes in love.

I wish we all believed in it so we can attract it.

Because some days it’s just hard to stand alone in the face of people who no longer believe in love, in the arms of people who sleep alone, in the company of those who turn their heads the other way when someone talks about romance.

I wish I didn’t have to be the only dreamer in a sea of doubters.

Maybe this is why I’m struggling to define it and maybe this is why I’m struggling to find it.

It’s harder to find something you’ve never had and it’s harder when the closest people to you keep telling you that it doesn’t exist and that you’re better off without it.

Some nights I find the strength and the faith to keep fighting for it, to keep standing up for love, but some other nights when love fails me, I wonder if there’s some truth to what they told me or maybe subconsciously I push people away because this is what I know.

I wish I had a better picture to trace back to instead of trying to capture my own because any picture I try to draw will be tainted with strokes of darkness from what I’ve been taught — from what I’ve seen.

I wish my parents taught me more about love. I wish they taught me that love exists, that love lasts. I wish they knew how to love each other.