I call myself a lover of all people, things, and places, but mostly people. Vulnerability has always been an inextricable part of who I am and who I choose to be. I choose love every time and all the time. I love people as easily as I inhale and exhale, and I open my chest to anyone who wants to reach in and warm their hands from the frost of this Dunya. Over and over again I have loved, I have lost, and I have been loved. But never equivalently or more than I have loved. I suppose that has always been the trigger for the increasing heaviness of my heart. I know of two people and one power that everyone enters the world with unconditional love from. Thy Mother, Thy Father, and Allah (SWT). My father didn’t love me, and I spent the better half of my life believing it didn’t have any significant effect on how I choose to love.

When I choose to love, I do so quickly, unconditionally and recklessly. I have loved friends more than myself, I have loved boys and men more than myself and I have expected and quietly demanded that they love me back. I have suppressed anger when the people I love have done me wrong or refused to love me in the way that I needed to be loved. I have given my patience, understanding, money and time to people I have loved and felt indignant when they didn't return that favor. I have looked for men to love me simply because I loved them and I have asked people to respect me simply because I respected them. I have done and accepted so much for the love of people who did not love me and did not want me but when it came to Allah, my mother and ny sister my heart has always been so hard and I don't know why. I suppress no anger when it comes to my mother or sister and my patience always run thin. Why is it that i have spent a lifetime running after people who didn't love me but a lifetime resenting the few people who do?

Perhaps it is the universe's karmic distribution for not being satisfied with the amount of love that I do have? perhaps it is the universe telling me that in this life you can choose who you love but you cannot choose who loves you. Perhaps the universe is telling me that for as long as you aren’t appreciative of those who love you, love will not come to you in the forms you crave it.

So, I’ve decided that being a lover of all people, places, and things quickly, unconditionally, and recklessly is far from noble. What's noble is loving the people I know will love me unconditionally, just as unconditionally as I love the people who won't. What is noble is remembering my budding love for myself when I find myself wrapped in infatuation with a man who doesn't deserve me. What's noble is remembering that Allah is my first and my only foolproof and never failing love and my mother is second to him. What is noble is teaching my sister who also lacks a father's love, that love from my mother, Allah and I is enough. What is noble is noble is changing the formula of how I love because self-love, respect, reflection and preservation are all of love’s greatest equalizers.