I’m a hopeful romantic. I watch movies on love and I’ve watched pornography. Pornography has nothing on the love stories. I don’t want anything shy of true love, because when I was young, I dreamed of it too. Sex was not what I longed for. I longed to lay arm in arm with my lover and spend time with my lover. I dreamed to fight for my lover and sacrifice for my lover. 
When I was young, snuggling was my favorite thing and I never wanted anyone to feel sad or alone or anything like that. Not even my stuffed animals were safe from my comforting arms and neither was my mom. 

My tiny arms would grab ahold of anyone if they wanted or not. I felt lonelier then ever, so I did all I could to keep myself on everyone to see we wouldn’t fall apart. But words pierced like knives and as I spread my arms wide, I found myself lunging into them heart first. 

I’ve loved so many girls that I could loose track if I didn’t connect myself to them so deeply. I don’t know how I stretched my heart so wide through texts. Although my phone was taken away from me, it couldn’t stop me from trying to create love in places love would never be. 

From girl to girl and picture to picture, love started distorting down to every pixel. I’ve never lost my heart for love, but years of distortion and restoring and destroying and relearning, my heart is a jumbled mess. 

I want true love and nothing short of that. My heart knows that! My body doesn’t mind settling for a picture or video on the screen, but my heart beats louder and stronger and I don’t want any more sight of that distortion, but my heart is still soft, yet is shaped like a stone. It wants to shake off every lie it has been told but it looks like a rock and believes it’s hard and cold, even though it can feel the blood flow. It can hear the cry of love that’s untainted. 

I want to love people. I want to love Jesus. I want to have a lover. I want to be a lover. 

I’m far more fragile then I would like to admit, but I pray to God he will strengthen and renew me each and every day. I’m pushing through the grit and I’m pushing through the stones. I want so badly to be free. This time, there is freedom. I can feel it in my bones.

I’m a hopeful romantic and this is just how it goes. Healing is a process, and I’ll sing every wrong note until I sing it right or the trumpet blows. That’s just how it goes.