For People Like Me

This is for everyone and anyone who has found it difficult to show or even handle true emotion. People who have discovered that they are incapable of loving another being, or handling with care as they should. For people who have run away from love as if it were the devil himself.

But what they were really running from was themselves.

I’m an 18-year-old Hispanic, Queer woman from a small town in California. I’ve had a good family life, a lovely home, and friends who care. But throughout my growing teenage years, fighting against my own brain, I went through battle, a war, to find out why. To find out why the idea of investing my soul into another human being sounded absurd to my own self. To find out why I even pictured myself unlovable.

Figuring out why I shut down when things go wrong, to asking myself if what I’m doing makes sense. Consciously giving people the cold shoulder hoping they will realize it first so I won’t have to ask for help. To pick any kind of argument I could just to get someone to listen.

At age 15, three years ago, I sat in front of my mother. At the end of her bed, the softest comforter on the planet just underneath my fingertips. I looked her in the eye, despite my brain and heart fighting over right and wrong, and told her I liked women.

The look on her face, I’m sure many understand. The look of slight disappointment, confusion, realization, and pain. All at the same time.

This was my first step towards acceptance.

When I was 16, I’d fallen in love with another woman. She quite literally glowed. She was smart, creative, kind. And she loved me too.

However, the fact she felt the same triggered something inside of me. When talks of the future, living together with children, would come up, I would shut down. And before I could fix myself, I turned her away. Through her tears on the phone, I told her I didn’t think I felt the same way. Despite the fact my heart skipped a beat whenever she messaged me, despite the fact we could talk on the phone for hours without pause or getting bored of one another. I was too afraid to carry her baggage along with my own

This pattern wasn’t unusual, I had done it many times before and even after. But her story was first choice, because I was still moving forward towards acceptance.

I’ve never been ideal at handling any emotions. Especially my own. It has always been an uphill battle, combatting loneliness with the fact I refused to trust anyone

Now, I’m 18. I’m 18 and I have just booked flights to Hawaii, and won’t be purchasing a return flight, for I will be married and in my new home with my husband.

In October of 2017, I met a man who changed my life in every way possible. He taught me how to feel, how to let someone in.

How to be in love.

But my bliss didn’t last too long. For a few months later, he had been shipped off into the Air Force.

Now it was only a matter of time before I gave up, right?

Checking the mailbox every day. Bursting into tears when receiving a letter. Replaying our only phone calls in my head.

When you’re separated from your love. When you can no longer even feel their presence or their existence. It changes everything. I pushed on knowing my relationship could take so many turns.

Now I lay in bed. It’s 11:23 PM on an August night. My lover is asleep on the other end of our call. I think back to all of the times I had unwillingly considered letting him go or saying goodbye to spare my own feelings. To protect my heart. To stop sending those letters.

But that is not always the solution.

When you meet someone, and your souls connect, you know. And for anyone out there who struggles with finding that person, stop looking. They will find you.

I promise.