By Kimberly L.
“I didn’t believe love could just be given. I thought it had to be earned— with beauty, with usefulness, with silence, with sacrifice.”
For a long time, I thought love was conditional.
That to be loved, I had to be:
That belief didn’t come out of nowhere.
It came from family. From old dynamics. From survival.
From watching love get handed out based on who was the least “difficult.”
I learned to do love—not to receive it.
To earn it.
To prove it.
To trade pieces of myself in exchange for scraps of affection.