My heart opens easily.

When I encounter people in my daily life, even if it is in the produce aisle of the Fresh Market, people share their hearts with me unprovoked.

I hold the space for them to be seen, felt, and held without hesitation.

I will often go weeks and months without hearing from distant friends, but I am their first call when they need a safe line to unpack their emotions.

When I enter into a new relationship, I walk forward with no walls.

I answer honestly, show up consistently, and don’t shy away from the depth of who I am.

I never have.

Even in fifth grade, I was writing a boy a note if I liked him and expressing how I felt when I didn’t receive an invitation.

I believe emotions were meant to be expressed.

I was never gifted the ability to push them to the bottom of my belly and smile through it.

The people in my world who know, see, and hold me consider all of these qualities invaluable.

But strength, when turned up too loud, becomes weakness.

I let people in too easily.

Before they show me the depth of who they are.

Because I have the purest intentions, I expect to be met in the same regard.

I ignore the intuitive hits when I am exploring a new love.

I tell myself the wounded, fragile, non-committal side is just there because it takes them longer to feel safe.

I make it my mission to be that safe space.

Allowing my feelings, my heart, and my intentions to flow effortlessly from my lips.

Making it impossible for me to sit in the “talking” stage of a relationship for very long.

I refuse to play games.

I won’t dance around what my heart feels.

And talking about the weather when your soul is begging to tell a different story is equivalent to nails on a chalkboard for me.

Men often run.

Or they cling tightly to my heart for all it gives without the thought of giving the same energy and intentionality in return.

I continue to give.

They continue to take.

With some mixed signals sprinkled in to keep my heart optimistic that this could be more.

You see, no one is one way all the time.

It is why so many of us stay when we know deep in our core we should leave.

Those millisecond, blink-of-the-eye moments when they show up like the person you believe that they are serves as the only glimmer of hope you need to keep loving.

But even if your heart held every ounce of love the universe gifted this world, it wouldn’t be enough to encourage them to touch the depths of who they are.

Only they can do that.

The love you are giving them so naturally is the love that you are failing to give yourself.

Choosing unavailable partners means you are not available to parts of yourself.

Because if you loved your own spirit as much as you do theirs, staying in a love that doesn’t hold you, or opening before they have laid their intentions clearly on the table, wouldn’t even be an option.

You would already know that you deserve the same safe space you spend all your energy creating for others.

Keep loving, keep feeling, keep being the giant-hearted, sensitive, in-tune lover that you are.

But be that person for you first.