When I was little, I thought I had the perfect family. I thought my dad looked at my mom like she was the most beautiful lady in the world and I thought my mom loved my dad even more than he loved her. However, later my parents divorced. After they divorced, I learned that they “loved” each other because they had kids together. I learned that they “loved” each other because they had known each other for so long.
Through my parent’s divorce, they taught me a lot about love. They taught me that love doesn’t always go your way. They taught me that love hurts sometimes. They taught me that love sometimes can be a one sided thing. They taught me that sometimes loving someone may not even be worth it. They taught me that loving someone with your whole heart for so long can, in the end, destroy you. There was a lot that they taught me about love, but turns out there also was a lot that they didn’t teach me about love.
My divorced parents didn’t teach me that when you find the one you really love, that there’s nothing in this world that can make your heart stop longing for them. They didn’t teach me that when you’re really, truly in love with someone, you want to spend every single moment of every single day by their side. They didn’t teach me that when you are truly in love and you’re apart, sometimes you miss them so much that your heart literally hurts. They didn’t teach me that you can love someone so much that you will find yourself spending countless hours praying to God that you never lose them. They didn’t teach me that you could have a love where you could act silly with the person, laugh until you cry with them, bust out in song randomly without being judged, have tickle fights with them, or stay up until 2 a.m. just talking about life with. They didn’t teach me that you can find a love so powerful, so real, and so true that it becomes the thing that makes you happy to be alive. My parents didn’t teach me that you can love someone so much that love becomes an actual physical feeling.
The things that my parents taught me about love, I am thankful for. But honestly, I’m more thankful for the things that they didn’t teach me. Coming from a divorced family I saw the pain, the tears, and the stress that love can cause a person. Because of this, it’s what I learned to expect from my future love. However, the things that my parents didn’t teach me about love are things that have made the love I have now so amazing. So, to my parents, thank you for the things that you didn’t teach me about true love.
