There Is Always Someone Who Loves You

Being in love with someone that doesn’t return your love is exhausting. It is frustrating and terrible and it changes you.

In March of 2009, I fell in love with a boy who walked around campus barefoot dancing to Jackie Greene and loving on everyone. He was a religious explorer, a green grass lover with exponential potential, and I was head over heels. He took me to a Buddhist temple and a Catholic mass, and three weeks later he called and yelled his excitement into my voicemail when I was chosen for a trip to Kenya with a poverty and AIDS awareness campaign. He hugged me tight before I left, and I spent the whole flight to DC wishing he was coming with me.

I was only in Kenya for a week, but it changed my life. I met children who walked more miles to and from school each day than I had walked in 10 years; men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS; commercial sex workers; and people who were living in a slum so packed that they were literally living on top of each other. I returned to the states devastated and emotionally exhausted, but for the first time felt I really understood God and how amazing people can be.

I got off the plane wanting to change the world, but my own was shattered 15 minutes after coming through customs. My uncle had died the day that I landed in Nairobi, and I hadn’t been called to return for the funeral. It brought my own father’s mortality to the forefront of my mind, and I lost it in the middle of the airport. I could barely breathe long enough to get out the words, “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

When I arrived back on campus, my barefooted boy came running out of his office and wrapped me in the biggest hug I’d ever needed. It wasn’t until later, when we were headed north for a student leader retreat, that I realized he was different. He’d started a new leadership position over the summer and his attitude had changed; he was arrogant and domineering, and he certainly wasn’t loving on everyone anymore.

When I was a kid, I’d been told that I wasn’t good enough. “You need to lose weight,” was a phrase I heard a lot, from someone who I’d thought would love me no matter what. I was constantly trying to change for that person, so much so that it bled over into my friendships. I tried to change for friends who abandoned me, and…