unconditional love

i’m in a relationship right now, and it scares me beyond belief because i don’t think i’m good enough for it.

he scares the shit out of me because it’s the first time i’ve felt love unconditionally, without having to earn it.

he doesn’t care about the scholarships i didn’t win, he doesn’t care about the messiness that is my life right now, he just says “thank you for being you” and that’s it. he doesn’t expect anything from me or ask for anything beyond my company. he doesn’t even care if i’m tired because he likes talking to me regardless. he calls me the sweetest person on earth and adorable and the love of his life. he asks me to promise that i'll tell him if i ever don't feel fine.

this is truly a human being that expects nothing and is happy with who i am, not just who i could be—which is the only version of me i’ve ever been in love with, the only version of me i’ve ever thought of as worthy of love.

i’ve spent my entire lifetime building an identity around becoming— stanford, scholarships, accomplishments and accolades, the future version of me who might one day deserve love. but here’s someone saying “this one, right now, tired and messy and discouraged—this is the one i want.”

it scares the shit out of me not just because it’s the most unconditional love i’ve ever felt, but also because if he stays, and if this works, i might have to face the truth that striving was never a prerequisite—that i always deserved it and never had to prove it. that i’ve been lovable this whole time and just never let myself believe it. that deep down, i’ve always been enough.

that undermines everything i’ve ever believed about how love works and my own self-worth.

and i suspect this is a more universal experience than most believe.

why does unconditional love ultimately feel so scary? it can’t just be because you’re afraid that things won’t work out, or that you’ll mess things up—that’s the whole point of how unconditional love is unconditional and accepts you for who you are.

instead, i think it’s scary because you feel like you don’t deserve it. and ultimately, you’re scared you might have to update your beliefs and be forced to reckon with years spent believing that you were lacking something when in fact you were whole all that time—paradoxically, your inability to see it was the only thing that made you incomplete.

for me, the scariest thing about unconditional love isn’t that he might change his mind, it’s the possibility that i’ve been wrong about myself all along. that i built an entire identity around needing to earn worthiness, and someone just showed up and said “you already have it.”

i’m scared to accept that because i’m scared that it means every late night, every sacrifice, every moment of pushing myself past my limits—all of it was done under a false premise. not that those things were worthless, but that they were never the admission price to being loved.

and if that’s true, then what was it all for? what is it all for moving forward?

i don’t have an answer to that yet. i’m still learning to sit with the discomfort of being loved for who i am rather than what i do; i still feel the need to prove myself to someone, somewhere, in order to earn praise and affection— and i still don’t quite know how to move past that and accept and value myself as simply a human being, independent of what i accomplish.

i’m still learning that when someone says “thank you for being you,” they might actually mean just that—not “thank you for what you’ll accomplish” or “thank you for your potential” or “thank you for helping me with xyz,” but thank you for existing exactly as you are right now.

i’m still learning that maybe the version of me that deserves love isn’t the future one who has everything perfectly planned and in place—it’s this one, writing this at midnight, still figuring things out, still scared, still learning, still so unsure of myself, still with the persistent feeling that i’m falling behind somehow, even though i don’t know how, and still with the sense that i am not enough, but unsure what the standard for 'enough' is and unsure who's setting it.

but i’ve got the most amazing person to walk with me as i figure things out and hold my hand through it.

i hope everyone finds someone special on this planet who will tell them, “when you doubt yourself, remember—i chose you, flaws and all.”

because, as they say: love should be a promise, not a question.