Is There Still Room for Love After All This?

The sixth entry in a healing and love series — where the ache is quieter now, but still echoing. 

There are days when I wonder if love still has space for someone like me.

Not the kind of love that rushes in like a storm — but the kind that stays. That sees the cracks and chooses to remain. The kind I used to believe was too tender for a life like mine.

Because I’ve been both the girl who got left — shattered, sobbing, wrecked at 3AM — and the girl who left first. Quietly. Deliberately. Before love could grow roots. Before it could convince me to stay.

And now that I’ve lived through both — the grief of being abandoned, and the guilt of abandoning — I carry a strange ache I can’t quite name.

I used to think love was something I could plan around. That I could feel it once, gently, then set it down like a souvenir — one I could remember fondly, but never carry again. I thought I could touch it and walk away before it got messy. Before it demanded too much. Before it asked me to choose.

But love doesn’t work like that. Not when it’s real.

And healing? Healing didn’t erase the ache. It just made it quieter. Softer. More honest.

Now, years later — after all the heartbreak, all the rebuilding, all the vows to myself — I catch myself wondering: Did I miss it?

Did I close the door too early? Did I armor up so well that now I don’t know how to let anyone in?

Is there still room in me — in my life, in my heart — for love?

It’s not that I don’t believe in it. I just don’t know if it believes in me anymore.

Because here’s the truth: Healing taught me how to protect myself.

But it didn’t teach me how to trust again.

It didn’t teach me how to stay when staying feels like risk.

It didn’t show me how to be soft and strong at the same time.

I carry all of that now — the tenderness, the distance, the quiet hope I don’t always admit out loud.

And I keep asking myself:

Do I want love again?

Or do I just miss being seen?

Am I ready for something new?

Or just tired of carrying everything alone?

Maybe it’s both.

Maybe the ache I feel now isn’t about the love I lost or left — but about the part of me that still believes I don’t deserve a love that stays.

The part that thinks I’ve used up my chances.

That I chose wrong once, and that’s all I’ll get.

But even in that doubt, there’s still a flicker. A small, steady pulse beneath the fear.

I don’t need love to fix me.

I just want to know if love could still find me — this version of me.

The one who’s healing.

The one who’s learning to forgive herself.

The one who left once because she didn’t know it was okay to want both — a future and a heart that’s held.

I don’t have all the answers.

But I do know this: If love ever comes again, I want to meet it from where I am — not who I was.

Messy. Healing. Honest.

And maybe that’s enough.

Missed the earlier pieces in this healing and love series?

Please visit - Beneath the Misses, Beyond the Mess: My Way Back to Me

And then the rest of the mess unfolds…

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