Do you still love me? (asking for a friend)
People say “it’s impossible to love someone else when you can’t love yourself”, and while I can prove that it is possible to be in love while learning to love yourself, it’s certainly not easy. I believe that love, as a verb, is one of the most sacrificial forms of human interaction. Now, that sacrifice doesn’t have to be a bad thing–in fact, oftentimes it’s beautiful: the vulnerability of allowing yourself to be fully seen, the subtle decision to choose someone when it would be easier not to, the willingness to give yourself to someone without the guarantee of anything in return. Yet, at the same time, offering that much of yourself requires a foundational security in knowing who you are. It requires something steady enough to not collapse the minute that love is tested.
But the reality with love is that inevitably, it will always be tested. So now, here I am, someone who is still learning to love themself, willingly stepping into something that I know will ask more of me than I know how to give, and may even collapse my foundation.
If depression has taught me anything, it’s that I am much more malleable than I’d like to believe. That my sense of self can shift quietly, almost imperceptibly, depending on how I’m seen or if I’m even seen at all. It has shown me how easily my identity becomes reactive–something shaped less by who I am and more by the perception of who I am. Because of that, I have learned to lean on other people as my mirrors: external reflections of myself that allow me to feel real or feel enough. In love, that tendency only intensifies.
A couple of months ago, I met a boy. After coming out of another relationship, the idea of letting another someone into my life gave me pause. There was so much of my heart that needed healing, but despite my reluctance, I ended up finding that healing in my–now–boyfriend. It felt good to fall in love–not just with him but with the version of myself I saw through him. The version of myself that felt easier, more certain, more worthy of being chosen. But that’s where the complexity lies. Because if he’s the one reflecting that version back at me, then what happens when the reflection shifts? What happens if he’s distant, or distracted, or even simply human in a way that doesn’t reaffirm me? Do I lose that version of myself too? What happens when my mental health (unavoidably) falters, and I begin to question everything that once felt stable?
Because when that happens, I can feel myself becoming overly sensitive–reading into pauses, into tone, into things that may not even be there. And even when he tells me how he feels, even when he reassures me in ways that should feel like enough, there still exists a part of me that resists believing it. Not because I think he’s lying, but because I don’t trust myself enough to accept that it could be true. That’s when the part of the process that is learning to love myself gets in the way–because I am still operating from a place that assumes I am inherently not worthy of that love.
I hate the idea that I’m driving him away with all my “do you still love me” and “are you sure you want to be with me”. I hate that I need constant reassurance to quiet a voice that never goes away. I hate that I can’t be easier, and I hate thinking that loving me is hard. It makes me feel like I’m shrinking something that’s supposed to feel expansive. Love is supposed to feel like a deep breath, but my own insecurity has managed to turn it into something suffocating. Something as fragile as me. Something that has to be constantly checked on instead of simply trusted.
The hardest part is that I’m aware of it as it’s happening. I can recognize the pattern, and I see the way fear disguises itself as curiosity, the way my insecurity turns into questions that don’t actually need answers. And yet, my awareness doesn’t translate to control. It’s like watching myself reach for something I already have, over and over again, because some part of me is convinced it will disappear the moment I stop holding onto it so tightly. I often question if putting myself in a relationship is selfish. If asking someone to stay close to me while I’m still learning how to stay close to myself is too much to ask. So much of me worries that I am receiving more than I should be allowed to. That love, in my state, is transactional–or something I take more from than I can properly return. That thought tends to sit heavily, because I don’t want to be the person that drains the very thing she’s trying to maintain. I don’t want my healing to come at the expense of someone else's peace. But then I also wonder if that thought itself is just another form of fear, convincing me that I am fundamentally too much, or not enough, or somehow misaligned with the kind of love I’m receiving. The truth is, I am not trying to take without giving. I am trying to learn how to exist inside love without constantly bracing for its disappearance.
Still, I think about him and I worry about him. I think about how patient he’s been with the parts of me that don’t know how to settle, and how collected he’s been for the version of myself that just can’t get it together. There’s no eloquent way to say that–it just feels like I’m constantly aware of the space I take up in his life, and how often that space is filled with my uncertainty. I’ve started to wonder if love is supposed to feel this heavy on one side of my mind. Not because he makes it heavy, but because I do. I keep trying to measure what I give against what I fear I take, as if love is supposed to balance out cleanly instead of living messily between two imperfect people.
But maybe I’ve been misunderstanding it, and maybe that’s where: maybe love isn’t meant to feel like accounting, or like I’m constantly calculating whether I deserve to stay. Maybe it isn’t supposed to feel like I’m one misstep away from becoming too much to hold. That’s where my mind struggles the most–because staying does not fit cleanly into the way I’ve learned to see myself. It doesn’t match the version of me that believes she has to earn permanence. So instead, I test it, and I look for cracks in something that isn’t necessarily breaking, just because I don’t yet know how to trust what does not require proving.
I don’t think I’ve learned yet how to be loved without interrogating it. How to receive care without immediately translating it into obligation or fear. How to let something be steady without assuming it will eventually turn. But I want to learn. Not because I want to become someone who never doubts, but because I want to stop letting my doubt define what is real. Because if love is going to exist in my life at all, I don’t want it to feel like something I am constantly surviving. I want it to feel like something I can finally rest inside of–without asking it, over and over again, if it is still allowed to hold me. I’m learning to love myself, and I need to learn that love for someone else has to exist alongside that process.
I think I’m finding that love is not something I can reach only after I’ve become fully certain of myself. I can make it something I learn how to exist within while I am still becoming. Not a contradiction, but a continuation of the same work. Because if love is a verb, then it has always been something I practice, not something I perfect. And maybe what I’m really trying to learn is that I don’t have to be finished in order to be loved. I just have to be willing to stay while I learn how.
