When I was younger, we lost a bird to a broken foot and I cried for days until mum cupped my face and spoke words that echoed in my heart “if you keep loving so much, you’ll spend your life digging yourself out of the heart cavities of people who do not love you in the same way.”

I couldn’t tell her then, that we talk about losing naïveté like shedding weight, as though it’s the best thing that could happen to us. But nobody told me that it’s okay to fall headfirst into people and if they move out of the way, well, it’s okay to collide with the floor too.

Trust me, they’ll talk about loving carefully like it’s picking your way through a dark field at night. But no one told me that loving is not dangerous or shy but grabbing fistfuls of raspberries and trying to fit as many as possible into your mouth or apple bobbing, or those dumb trust exercises they make you do at workshops.

Let’s wholeheartedly embrace love, diving headfirst into the ocean of emotions and letting the waves crash over us. Love is not meant to be cautious, but wild, untamed, and unapologetic.

Copyright © Beatriz Esmer