This is one where my two a.m. thoughts have crept over into ten a.m. waves of panic. I overthink a lot, I worry a lot, I get inside of my own head, a lot. But this time it's actually worked out in my favor.

I was in love with a boy who wasn't so kind to me or my heart. I loved him for years, three and a half slow, painful, agonizing years. We had some really good times, but most of it was not okay. He cheated, he lied, he abused, he manipulated, and it took me getting to leave to realize that was the best thing that could have ever happened.

He's been gone for a while now, I don't even know how long it's been anymore. Instead of shutting down when he left, I opened up and I thrived. I found friends, I found an amazing job and a place where I truly belonged.

Eventually, the stars were lined up in just the right way and I took a chance on a boy I had been questioning my feelings on for a while, and we fell in love. The nice, safe, slow kind of love, but at the same time it's the kind of love you know isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so slow is okay. He is everything I never knew I was missing out on. He does things for me and has a relationship with me that I never even knew was a possibility in a romantic setting.

He tells me he loves me, ask how my day is every day at almost the same time, is honest with me, and goes out of his way to make us work. I didn't understand why he does this?

Who in his right mind would take the time, effort and occasional money to cater to an overly anxious, analytical, unattractive, cautious, broken mess of a girl like me, let alone actually me?

Then I realized, it was never me. I am not hard to love, I was never hard to love. I was just focusing all my time and energy on trying to teach someone to love me when (literally) right across from me was a beautiful soul who loves me exactly as I am, for what I am.

I often catch myself still slipping into these ideas of "what could I have possibly done to get this boy to love me the way he does?" or I'll get into these moods where I'm terrified he's going to leave and I'll just be left in the wreckage of another broken heart.

That's when another realization hits. I only think that way because that's all I've ever know. If you had been told your whole life the sky is green, you would struggle to understand that it is in fact blue. My love is nothing like the demon I dealt with in the past and I can't treat him like he is. The trust I have in him must be genuine if I expect us to go anywhere, and I do.

Someday we'll have a ranch home in Texas with our dream jobs and two amazingly beautiful children. Until then, we will do what we have to in order to make us who we want to be. Instead of worrying why I wasn't good enough for someone else and the false truths they instilled me, I should focus on the amazing life I have in front of me. & that's exactly what I plan to do.