Love the Darkness

I went on a journey. Not physically. This time, mentally, emotionally.

It started as another warm tear made its way down my cheek. When an uncontrollable chain of thought hit me. Took control.

A first fact floated to my consciousness: No one has ever loved my flaws. Not even my own mother. And especially not me. I accept them. But that's not the same. No one has ever loved all of me. I am not referring to unconditional love. What I mean is loving the darkness. Because it is easy to love someone's light, but quite different to love their darkness.

I then realized this fact makes it harder to believe that this kind of love even exists. A love for the light, equally as strong as a love for the darkness. Yet, that's what I want. What my soul is searching for. I want to be able to love, not only appreciate, but fully embrace my lover's flaws. I am trying to teach myself how to feel it for someone else. A friend. A stranger. A temporary lover. I want to know what loving someone's darkness feels like.

I thought I was on this explorative journey to become a better person. To learn how to love better. To get ready to meet the one, and love him fully, properly.

But then I started to realize I must have chosen this path solely for my own need to know it exists. I need proof. Surely, if I can love other people's flaws, it will mean someone, somewhere, can love mine... I am not teaching myself this to become a better person. I am teaching myself this to feel deserving of it. To allow myself to ask it from someone else. Like a selfish agenda. Selfish like the fresh tear coming to life in the corner of my eye. A product of feeling sorry for myself.

I then thought of my most obvious darkness. The one others have reproached the most. The one they have casually used to put me down. The one they have comically highlighted in what was, in reality, some of my most vulnerable states. Unknowingly hurting me. Maybe accepting my darkness. But definitely not loving it.

A lot of my own flaws remind me of my dad. Another tear warms my cheek, my chin, my neck, at the thought. I breathe it in.

I loved him so much. The good, and the bad. So, inevitably, I loved his flaws. Every single one he showed me when I was growing up, learning to become an adult, a good person... Flaws so obvious we lovingly mention them when honouring him.

The next thought to float to me was that perhaps this proves I already know how to feel that kind of love. I may never know if my dad loved my darkness. But I guess at least I now know it is possible to do so, in somebody else.

If I continue to attempt to fully appreciate the darkness in my friends, lovers, strangers... maybe one day it will be reciprocated. Satiating my soul. Shedding their light on my shadows. Lovingly.