_.sergio.rivera._ :
So I ask you, am I not allowed to love? Am I not worthy of being loved? Do you truly see me as so blind, so naive, that I cannot tell the difference between love and lust? Do you believe I don't know what genuine love looks like? Yes, maybe I was foolish. Maybe I held on to someone who was never meant to stay. Maybe I believed too long that honesty would eventually replace lies and that faithfulness would overcome betrayal. But being hopeful does not mean I was incapable of love. It does not mean I did not know what love was.
Tell me, Was it not love when I was patient with him? Was it not love when I showed him kindness, even on the days when my own heart was breaking? Was it not love when I tried not to keep a record of his wrongs, choosing forgiveness over resentment?
Was it not love when I celebrated his successes as if they were my own? Was it not love when I was slow to anger because my love for him was greater than my pride? And is it not still love now that I still grieve, even after I had to let him go for the sake of my own peace? Even after I chose to walk away because love should never require me to abandon myself? If that is not love, then tell me, what is? If patience is love, if kindness is love, if forgiveness is love, if enduring heartbreak is love, if putting someone else's happiness before your own is love, then what exactly did I give? Do not stand before me and tell me that I do not know what love is. I have loved with my whole heart. I have trusted until trust was shattered. I have forgiven until there was nothing left to forgive. I have stayed until staying meant losing myself. I have walked away, not because I stopped loving, but because I finally learned that loving someone should never require abandoning my own peace. So do not call me a fool. Do not tell me I have confused love with lust. I know what lust looks like. I also know what love feels like. Because I have lived it. And it nearly broke me. I know what I felt wasn’t a sin and this is what drove me from Christianity.
2026-06-29 14:28:50