My Personal Love Memoir

I am taking a class on women of color in feminism and part of the assignments is to write a journal so ill post my journal entries on here...


1. What is the role of love in your life? Consider your personal “love memoir.” What do you learn about yourself, your gender, your family (and other things) from considering such a memoir.

Love is an Addiction, an affliction, a fault in vision, yet it’s still the best feeling given the worst description. Love is life. Love is the air I breathe, the food I eat, the books I read, the music I listen to, and the relationships I cherish the most. Love is all around. Sometimes its good, sometimes it’s bad, but its all what we choose to make of it. I feel like I have learned a lot about love in the last few years, the good the bad and the ugly. I have fallen in and out of love with friends, family and boyfriends and all of those experiences I feel have helped to make me in to a better and more knowledgeable person when it comes to matters of the heart. I fell in love for the first time when I was 17, and again at 18, 19, and 20. At 21, after a bad breakup with my last boyfriend, I realized I was more in love with the idea of being in love than the actual person I was showing affection for. I decided then that I needed to find out what real love was and to do that, I needed to learn how to love myself first and foremost. I have spent a long time doing just that, learning to love myself, my faults, my strengths, my weaknesses, all of the things that make me, me. I love my family, my mom and dad were very divided as to how they thought that my sister and I should be raised and loved but they always agreed that loving us was always going to be number one. My mom passed away in January of 2006, her love for us was unconditional to a fault. We came first in her heart and her mind and when she died she made us promise to always love each other no matter what. Losing her left a big hole in my heart, when you have that all consuming type of love for a person and they are gone its hard. Then I woke up one day and realized that her love for us never left, it surrounds us and helps us when we need it most. My sister and I love each other wholly. Even though at times we have our differences, our love is stronger than any petty disagreement that siblings, especially sisters, could ever have. Losing our mother made us stronger. The one lesson she taught us is that no matter what, when you love someone or something never be afraid to let them know, whether its with words or actions telling someone you love them can be life changing. My dads love has always been conditional, as we have gotten older we have learned to deal with that, it sucks but that’s how he is and he isn’t going to change any time soon. I think the biggest love mistake I have made to date was falling in love with my best friend knowing that he loved me but not the way I wanted him to. For a long time it was fine but in the end after 5 years of being distracted by him and my love for him I realized that the only person I was truly hurting was myself. I have learned a lot about love from my friends too. As friends we have all adopted one another to become a family of sorts, and there is love in abundance, we have seen one another go through the trials and tribulations of failed relationships, baby momma/daddy drama, friendships gone awry, parental strife, you name it we have all gone through it and helped one another get through it. My guy friends are all softies, as friends there are a couple that will say love you at the end of a conversation or upon saying goodbye. The funny thing about that, they all say that my mom taught them how to be open with love. A lot of my guy friends come from families and cultures that teach them that men aren’t supposed to be open about their feelings. You don’t cry you never say “I love you,” you’re supposed to hide your feelings. It is to be assumed that you feel those things just never shown. It is funny to be around that because even though my dad is so funky with his love he will still say I love you with a hug and a kiss and sometimes even a “what do you want?” The men in my family are a little more open with their feelings than some of my friends but regardless of it all I love them and they love me. My girlfriends on the other hand are way different, most of them are still stuck in the love for all of the wrong reasons category, they make me happy I am single sometimes. I would rather be single and happily in love with myself, than be in a relationship that is detrimental to my state of well being. Some women feel like they need a relationship to be complete and happy, a lot of those women will hook up with the first guy or girl that shows them any type of affection, its “love” at first sight, when we all know its really just lust! When the relationship turns bad they will stay, because they remember the kind of person that they first met and they hope that he/she is still in there somewhere. I was that girl once, I will never be her again. I know that right now I love myself, I love my friends and I love my family. I love my life, even though there are plenty of things I need to change to make it better, its mine and I love it. I love material possessions, my love affair with my monster couch and blackberry are rediculous, but that’s ok its part of what people love about me. I know that one day I will meet someone who is right for me and that all of the bad decisions and mistakes I have made will have paved that path that led to him. I will love him and he will love me and that will be fine , but I will always love myself first. No matter what, my life is full of love and that is the most important thing to me. Love to me makes the negatives all positive, makes it so I live my life with no regrets and no expectations. Love is good, love is bad, love is beautiful, love is ugly sometimes, but love will always be love. I am love.