Truly. Madly. Deeply.

This is both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.

Because your tears becomes my tears. Your pain becomes my pain. Your loss becomes my loss.

And depending on the person, this can be a problem.

Because, if I love you…I will drown with you.

I will throw myself overboard…I will hold your hand…I will let my lungs fill up right alongside you.

And I will drown in an ocean of our collective tears just so you don’t have to sink alone.

But I would really love to stop doing that.

Because, ultimately, it doesn’t end up helping you…it just ends up hurting me.

We both end up holding our breath while we wait for a search party to bring us back to life.

The truth is, being a human is scary sometimes. Loving people is scary sometimes. And knowing how much of yourself to give is really scary sometimes.

But I’m learning that my love can do a lot of things…

My love can teach you to swim. My love can throw you a life raft. My love can even call the coast guard.

My love will search through all hours of darkness for you.

But my love can’t rescue someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

And sometimes, as hard as it is, people need to see how far they can sink before their lungs cave in.

I know. I’ve been that person.

But I can’t go down with you anymore, because my love also wants to be there for you when you come up for air like I know you will. My love wants to meet you at the shore…bring you a blanket…and a safe place to land. My love wants to help you recover and get warm and find your strength again.

And my love can’t do any of that if it’s being pulled from the water alongside you.

My intention for this coming year is to love more from dry land…from a place of stability and strength and solid ground.

So when the tide rolls in and the current runs deep…I can be there FOR you…not just with you.

Because my love doesn’t want to lose you to some wreckage at the bottom of the ocean.

And, much to my surprise, my love doesn’t want to lose me either.