Loving the broken

10 months and 307 days have passed since I started dating my best friend. May 2nd, 2018 was the day that started 10 months and 307 days of laughs, fun dates, good food, great memories, love notes, cute pictures, and copious amounts of love. It was also the start of learning to love when broken, and learning to love when healing…

After my second boyfriend had sexually assaulted me and betrayed me, true love had become a fantasy, and a good man did not exist in my world. My faith in good men was ruined, and I became terrified of ever trusting another man again. Being romantically intimate with a man was out of the question. I had given men a second chance to restore my faith in them, and I was betrayed and sexually assaulted again. Good men did not exist in my world… Not until him.

The man I am dating now (who’s name I’ll leave out) is a real man. He is a good man, my therapist was right, “good men do exist”. He is my best friend, my love, my boyfriend, my family and so much more. He taught me what it was like to be in a real, healthy relationship. He showed me what love should be like; beautiful, true, and breathtaking. He proved to me that I can date a man without sexual intimacy being required to maintain happiness. I couldn’t imagine life without him.

I was broken and even years later, I am still healing. I am an emotional mess; yet, he loves me unconditionally. He’s the reason I make it to school on time, and he calls me every morning to make sure I’m awake and that I’ve taken my medication. He asks me how therapy was after every session and he’s even come to a few therapy sessions with me before. My boyfriend knows me so well, that he can tell if I’m upset by the way I text. He has driven 5 hours from Savannah, Georgia, just to make sure I am okay.

He cares about me, more than he should. That sounds awful because everybody deserves to be cared for, even when they think they don’t deserve it. My point is that I came with heavy baggage and loads of tragedies; teenage dating violence, sexual abuse, emotional and verbal abuse, depression, anxiety, PTSD, another sexual assault, years of therapy, an overall lack of trust in men… I came to him carrying my past behind me, and he took me anyway. He held my hand, and with the other, he took ahold of my baggage and together, we carried it all.

He deals with my spouts of anger, my days of self-destructive behaviors, my laziness, my 2am anxiety, my 4pm overthinking, and the rest of the mess I tend to unintentionally put him through. He loves me through flashbacks and mood swings, and through both the real and the irrational fears that fill my mind. He sees me at my worst and still chooses to be with me. He stays with me, despite a troubling past and my mess of a mind.

Sometimes I struggle to come up with reasons why anybody would put up with me. He wants to marry me, live with me, have kids with me. Why? I guess I’ll never know the real answer, but he loves me when I am unloveable, and he loves me like no other. He loves me no matter how hard I am to handle. He loves me from 278 miles away… He loves me forever and always, no matter what.

That is loving the broken.