YOU'RE LOVED 🫂🌸

You Are Loved

I think most of us, at some point, have felt like we aren't loved enough.

Not necessarily because nobody loves us. Sometimes it's just because the love we want isn't coming from the person we want it from, or it isn't coming in the way we expected.

You can have people around you and still feel alone.

You can have friends and still wonder who would actually notice if you disappeared for a while.

You can have parents who care about you and still feel like they don't understand you.

You can be surrounded by people and somehow still think, Does anyone really love me?

And if you keep thinking about it long enough, the feeling starts looking like evidence.

You begin believing it.

But maybe we're getting something wrong.

Maybe you are loved more than you notice.

Your friend remembers the food you always order.

Your mother waits for you to call.

Someone asks whether you reached home.

Someone remembers a stupid little thing you said three months ago.

Someone notices when you're quieter than usual.

Someone smiles when they see you.

None of these things look particularly dramatic.

But maybe love was never supposed to be dramatic all the time.

Sometimes it is just someone remembering.

Sometimes it is someone waiting.

Sometimes it is someone making space for you without even telling you that they're doing it.

I think our problem is that we have a very specific idea of what being loved should look like.

We want people to understand us in the exact way we understand ourselves.

We want them to notice the qualities we are proud of.

If we think we're funny, we want them to find us funny.

If we've worked hard to become confident, we want them to notice our confidence.

If we've spent years becoming kinder, we want someone to recognise that too.

And when they don't notice those things, we sometimes take it personally.

We think, Maybe they don't really care about me.

But why should everyone see us the way we see ourselves?

They can't.

Every person who knows you has met a different version of you.

Your best friend knows the version of you that talks too much.

Your parents know the version that comes home tired.

Your sibling might know the version that annoys them every day but still shows up when they need help.

Someone else might know the quiet version of you.

Someone might know the ambitious version.

Someone might know the insecure version that you don't show very often.

And someone might simply remember that you were kind to them once.

They're all loving something about you.

It just isn't necessarily the same thing.

I find that strangely beautiful.

Because there isn't one single version of you that everyone has to understand.

Different people can know different parts of you and still genuinely care about you.

But there is something we need to admit too.

Sometimes we want people to understand us completely while giving them very little to understand.

We tell people about our achievements but hide the things we're ashamed of.

We show them when we're happy but disappear when we're struggling.

We talk about our plans but keep our fears to ourselves.

Then, after hiding half of ourselves, we wonder why nobody knows what we're going through.

How would they?

People can only respond to what we allow them to see.

That doesn't mean you need to expose everything about yourself to everyone.

You don't.

But there is a difference between having boundaries and constantly hiding because you're afraid that the real you won't be accepted.

And sometimes we make love even harder by trying to control it.

We want someone to care in a particular way.

We want them to say certain things.

We want them to notice certain details.

We want them to react exactly as we would react.

Then when they don't, we think their love isn't real.

But people aren't going to love us according to a script we wrote for them.

They have their own way of showing affection.

Some people talk.

Some people do things.

Some people remember.

Some people stay.

Some people aren't good at saying anything at all, but they'll still be there when you need them.

You can't force someone to connect with a particular part of you.

You can show them who you are.

After that, you have to let them respond naturally.

Maybe that's one of the difficult things about being loved.

You don't get to choose exactly how someone loves you.

You only get to decide whether you are willing to recognise it.

Then there is another thing we do all the time.

We look at other people's lives and feel like we're missing something.

Someone has a better relationship.

Someone has more friends.

Someone is travelling.

Someone got the opportunity we wanted.

Someone seems to have figured their entire life out while we're still trying to figure out what we're doing next week.

And suddenly our own life looks smaller.

But we don't actually know what their life feels like from inside it.

We're comparing our ordinary moments with the parts of their life that happen to be visible to us.

And while we're doing that, we can miss the things that are already ours.

A friend calls, but we're thinking about the friend we wish we had.

Someone wants to spend time with us, but we're thinking about the people who aren't.

An opportunity appears, but we're too busy looking at another opportunity someone else received.

We keep looking somewhere else.

And sometimes, without realising it, we start ignoring the very things we were afraid of losing.

People often say, "The right people will come at the right time."

I like the sentence.

But I don't know if I believe it completely.

What does "the right person" even mean?

Are they going to arrive without misunderstandings?

Without annoying habits?

Without disagreements?

Without ever hurting us?

Of course not.

People are complicated.

We are complicated.

Someone doesn't have to be perfect to become important to you.

Sometimes you only understand what someone meant to you after they've already become part of your story.

The same thing happens with moments.

You don't always know you're living an important moment while it's happening.

Sometimes you're just sitting somewhere, talking to someone, drinking coffee, walking home, laughing about something stupid.

Years later, you remember that exact evening and realise it mattered.

Meaning doesn't always arrive beforehand.

Sometimes we give meaning to things only after we've lived through them.

Maybe that's why constantly waiting for the "right" people or the "right" moment can make us miss the people and moments that are already here.

We're waiting for life to look the way we imagined it.

And life keeps arriving differently.

Maybe love is like that too.

Instead of always asking,

"Why doesn't anyone love me the way I want?"

maybe we could occasionally stop and ask,

"How are the people around me already showing that they care?"

That doesn't mean every relationship is healthy.

It doesn't mean we should accept being mistreated just because someone says they love us.

And it definitely doesn't mean everyone around us secretly loves us.

Some people won't.

Some relationships aren't meant to stay.

Some people really will leave.

But that doesn't mean you're unloved.

You can lose one person and still be loved by another.

You can feel lonely tonight and still be deeply important to someone.

You can be misunderstood by one person without being impossible to understand.

You are loved.

Maybe not by everyone.

Maybe not in the exact way you hoped.

Maybe not as often as you'd like.

But somewhere, in someone's life, you matter.

And I think there is another side to this that we don't talk about enough.

We're so busy asking whether we're being loved that we forget to ask whether we're loving anyone.

Who texted first?

Who remembered my birthday?

Who checked on me?

Who stayed?

Who left?

We keep track of these things as if love is some kind of scoreboard.

But what if it isn't?

What if the point isn't to become the person who receives the most love?

What if it is simply to become someone who knows how to give it?

Call someone because you thought of them.

Ask how they're doing and actually listen.

Remember the little things.

Be there when there isn't anything useful you can say.

Tell someone you appreciate them before something happens that makes you wish you had.

I think life feels different when you stop treating love as something you have to constantly prove you're receiving.

You start noticing how much of it already exists around you.

And maybe you start giving more of it too.

There is also something about loving yourself that gets misunderstood.

I don't mean waking up every morning and convincing yourself that you're perfect.

You're not.

Neither am I.

You have flaws.

You'll make stupid decisions.

You'll disappoint people.

You'll probably disappoint yourself too.

That's normal.

But you don't have to spend your entire life hiding those things because you're scared that someone might see them.

Let people see you.

Not just the version that has everything figured out.

Let them see the awkward parts.

The insecure parts.

The confused parts.

The parts that are still growing.

Because if you are constantly performing a version of yourself for other people, eventually you won't even know which version is actually you.

And maybe that's what I really mean when I say you are loved.

You don't have to become extraordinary before you deserve someone's affection.

You don't have to be the funniest person in the room.

You don't have to have your life figured out.

You don't have to be perfect.

You just have to exist honestly enough for someone to actually know you.

A flower doesn't spend its entire life worrying about whether someone is going to notice it.

It doesn't compare itself with the flower next to it.

It just grows.

It opens when it can.

And maybe we should stop trying so hard to convince everyone that we're worth loving.

Maybe we should let ourselves be seen.

Notice the people who are already there.

Give love without constantly checking whether we're getting the same amount back.

And then, maybe, we'll realise something that was there the whole time.

We weren't waiting for love to arrive.

We were just too busy looking for it to notice that some of it had already found us.

Maybe we should just bloom.