We’re humans. And we’re flawed.
Because we’re supposed to be, right? Because we are.

So we push ourselves into corners, notice all the ways we don’t measure up, count our past mistakes and regrets and failed relationships like unwanted birthmarks on our skin.

We tell ourselves we’re hurting, that we have trust issues, that we’re broken, and maybe we are, but we take our lives and twist them in a million directions, tell ourselves all the ways we cannot be loved, all the ways we are difficult and different, too much or too little.

But maybe, just maybe, we complicate ourselves.

We compartmentalize our feelings into little boxes and convince ourselves that someone needs to open us. We believe we’re puzzles that need to be solved, that we’re books with warped endings, that we’re caterpillars that don’t always turn into butterflies, but become something messier, more terrifying.

We back away from people and things that love us because we’re convinced we don’t have the answers, that we don’t know what we want, that we don’t know who we are, that we don’t deserve happiness, but maybe we’re really just afraid of ourselves.

Maybe we need to learn to turn off the voice that’s pulsing inside our brains.
Maybe its us that makes our own lives so difficult.

We think we need to have painful pasts to achieve better futures, that we have to be broken to know how to love, that we need to have some type of hurt, buried deep inside us in order to be real, and human.

We think we have to be women and men who are tough on the outside and soft on the inside, who act one way but think another. We believe this makes us attractive, to be complicated. Makes us worth the chase, worth the discovery of what’s beneath the layers.

But maybe we really don’t need the layers at all.

Maybe we’re not so complicated. Maybe we’re emotions, that once filtered through, are telling us what we’ve known all along. Maybe we’re people not torn over our pasts, not nervous to fall for someone, not burdened and convoluted and impenetrable.

Maybe we’re very simple creatures who just want to love and be loved.

And we’re flawed, sure, because it’s inherent. But our flaws are not what defines us. Our intricacies and complexities and difficulties are not what defines us.

Maybe we are simple people. We’re just afraid of ourselves.