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As I sit here today, I am fighting tears. I opened myself up. I was vulnerable. I gave myself to another, again. And again, I am alone. Am I hard to love? I don’t think I am, but the fact that I can’t keep anyone in my life leads me to believe otherwise. I am the common denominator. I am too much. I honestly thought that there was someone that matched me. Whose soul was akin to my own…… but it turns out that my insecurity and abandonment issues are too much for anyone. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to share my heart again. Bonnie Raitt has a song that I have long adored…. I can’t make you love me…. It has a heartbreaking lyric that I have long since identified with. “You can’t make your heart feel, something it won’t.” The magnitude of those words is heavy. Wouldn’t life be so much better if we could make the people we love, love us back? Would there be less divorce, more love? Wouldn’t the world be a better place overall? I know the saying “it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” I have contemplated that statement so much over my life, and I have a love-hate relationship with it. I think it hits different in every relationship and different ways for everyone. I think if you are widowed, then it absolutely is better, but if someone willing leaves you it’s just not worth it. It’s not worth opening you heart and having in trampled on for no reason. Sure, there were good times and happy times but that is now all clouded by hurt. All I’m looking for is a way to escape the pain, to numb it, to go back to before the day I met him when I was happy and content. Now there is a hole in my life, a hole in my heart, a hole so big that I can’t breathe. My brain is consumed with thoughts of what-if’s, what did I do wrong, what should I have done instead? Why am I too much for someone? You know how most people have grand dreams for their life? My grand dream was a family. I wanted the very boring, unpopular for these times, house, husband, kids, dogs. For whatever reason, it has been deemed that I am not worthy of that dream, and that’s ok, it just hurts really bad. It was so nice to have someone in my corner, someone who checked on me, who I could talk to about my day, who wanted me around. Life isn’t fair, and I more than anyone, know that, but I honestly thought it was my time for something good. That’s the thing with me, though. I don’t do anything halfway; I am all in or all out. That is my superpower, love and empathy beyond 100%, which typically leads to a lot of heartache. Grief is a funny thing; it comes in all shapes and forms. There are times that you don’t think you will survive, but you look back and realize you did survive. I am currently in the “I’m not sure I will survive” phase of grief, but I know that I will, I always do, it’s just so hard. It shouldn’t be this hard.