The first time I remember experiencing love.

I was in the car on my way home after school, wearing my school uniform and looking out of the window and the fields passing. This feeling came to me, I knew it was love; a feeling of ‘being in love’. But then my mind came in and asked, ‘but for WHO are you feeling this love for?’. I thought about the boys at school and thought to myself ‘I don’t even fancy anyone, so I can’t be in love’, and I dismissed the feeling. How sad my education, that as a child I would think that love is only for projecting onto others, and in a romantic way, and yet, I felt it, looking out at nature, and finding presence there. It took me a long, long time to understand that love is a feeling inherent within me, and despite feeling it then, my ‘educated’ mind told me something different.

I spent eight years depressed, most of that time cut from my feelings, and the remaining time in pain. Now that I found my way out of that beautiful darkness, I find presence with myself again. I am remembering how I make myself laugh, because I truly find myself hilarious, how I love being with myself because in the present moments I allow life to flow through me; in creativity, in self care, in silly little dances and songs and natural self entertainment. I understand that rest is important for growth, and simply ‘being’ is the most powerful thing I can ‘do’.

Since coming out of this long dark night, I am laughing again, at things that are funny, and in that laughter, that I had before lost, I know that is self love, not feeling I need to share it with others, but content to share it with myself, and feed everything back into myself, for my own personal growth. I see now how it was my own undoing that has led me back to myself, and with greater understanding, to be able to laugh with myself, to be able to be present with myself, to enjoy the most simple things and moments in life; that is love.