for you can never be truly worthy of love from a person who's empty

   Trying to make sense of why am I never truly worthy of forgiveness. If that is the water that keeps love growing, why am I always given love that is not willing to forgive? Love that comes with the ticket to fly back home already paid for. If I am only loveable until one of my flaws comes forward, am I ever truly loved? Why am I not worthy of love that changes? Love that sacrifices, love that adapts, love that is willing to move forward. Why is it that I see others give each other forgiving love that they can never give me? And, why is it that, when asked, no one ever can answer these questions? Why am I not worth the soft admiring, the love that surpasses shame, the love that surpasses self hate, the love that surpasses fear and also dignity? I wish someone would look me in the eye and tell me when did I turn myself into this bottomless pit of unworthyness. 

  Or is it that I am, as I've always been, looking at myself through the wrong lenses? I have friends who have shown me love that truly changes. Love that insists. I have a lover who has also done so. Maybe it would be of less importance if the first person to convince me of my unworthyness was not my mother. If she had not teached me to accept and even beg for love that destroys. Love that humiliates, that only takes, and takes, and takes, never once giving. Love that presents itself with conditions, with restraints; love with the habit of inserting more and more guilt under my skin for being unworthy of it. Maybe it is that the only person I ever wanted to love me has no idea of what is love. And so, every other situation that resembles this will always look, to me, like a confirmation. 

  Having every try to obtain validation that my bruises were real turned into mockery for never healing, and for still trying to turn myself into somebody worthy of that love, and existing in such ways that kept me always unworthy, I traded everything to become love itself. As I expanded my tries to heal from trying to love my mother enough so that I could be worthy of being loved back to trying to love other people that also felt unworthy themselves so that I could be at least worthy of appreciation or grattitude, I discovered that people were willing to give me things I never imagined to receive in return, including that love I had  always hoped for.

  That leads me to the realization that people who cannot give me the love I expect might not have that love available, or, at least, for reasons I am yet to or might never understand, available for me. 

  As for my mom, she never had that love to give in the first place, nor to herself, nor to anyone else, as she is devoid of any love that exists out of her cruel means. And nobody can ever fill her up, not even me, for she has no place in her being capable of holding love, and for any love that is given to her leaks out of her lips as poison. And still, she exists; and still, I love her. If grief is love with nowhere to put it, then I have been grieving my very much alive mother ever since I was born. 

  And trying to save the life of somebody who was never, in fact, willing to live, for life only exists through love, I was, until this very moment, killing myself.