Thank you for booking your trepidation. See you next fall.

Are you afraid of the dark ... or are you afraid of the light?

Love and fear. Both can be crippling and both can prompt greatness. 
It is as complicated as it sounds.

To write about love I have to decide which idea of love I am writing about. When the suggestion was proposed I imagined “love” was the commonly regarded, romantic love. 

Love and fear appear to be coupled together in some cosmic or empyrean way, in fact many of us live in fear of love. 

Fear of finding love, fear of losing love, fear of being open to love, fear of letting love go...

It's all very textbook, and frankly a little blasé. 

I don't think the connection between love and fear is as inexplicable as one might think.

I think I can account for it. I think it is this. 

We, mostly, fear change. And love, inevitably changes us. 
Bam. 

We are not wrong to be afraid of love. 
Love can frighten. Love can evade. Love can entice. Love can trick. Love can dissect. Love can keep you prisoner. Love can kick your ass. Love can fill you with doubt. Love can leave you alone. 
All of this changes us; that is, if we're lucky.

There are so many more provocative things to be afraid of than love

and there are so many more worthy responses to love than fear. 

I'm not impervious to fear of love, I just suffer from a different stroke of it. 

Self love. This is my personal struggle now, and it's closely related to fear. 

I have always been careful in my words when writing about this,
I do not wish to change who I am. 
I am only seeking growth, 
but with growth comes pain
and sometimes 
it hurts so badly 
I want it to stop. 

But I can't let it. 
When I think of all the times in my life that I was most unhappy, I think of the times I was stuck. 
The times I reconciled everything around me, including myself.
I challenged nothing and no one. I expected nothing and accepted everything.
I was content.
In other words,
I was so unhappy. 

I spend more time with myself than anyone else. I don't want to simply like me, I want to love me. I want to be proud of me. I want to introduce me to other people. I even want to brag about me sometimes. 
But similar to romantic love, I evade, I dissect, I kick my ass, and I doubt...


My advice for those afraid of love is this;
Trust. 
You must trust. Especially if you are afraid. 
Something Everything is at risk, therefore you have everything to gain.

Love can't work without trust. I've witnessed what the absence of trust does to love ... and I feel what it does to me when I can't find it in myself.  
It is a labyrinth of fear. And there is only one way out. 
Trust.






This is a playlist I made for writing the blog: