Mark Downie's Page

From the age of twelve onwards, love became something that vast amounts of my time was spent on trying to find. The tingles, the thumping heart, the feeling of everything being brand new, I loved love, it gave me wings. It made me feel alive.

My first ever experience with love led to a broken heart. The heartache I sustained was such an intense feeling at the time that I felt as though I was slowly beginning to die. How this amount of pain could possibly stem from such euphoria had me flummoxed completely. It was indeed a horrible time in my life but overall, it was such an amazing experience that the heartache itself became a risk I believed to be worth taking again just to have love within my life. It meant everything to me and so, dressed in my heart, I set off to find it once again. The feeling of completeness, of being accepted, is one that we all crave in our lives and at this point in time, it had fully taken it's hold on me. I had tasted love and I liked it.

I began my search and many years soon past, each of them however, where filled with heartache. I couldn't fathom what I was doing wrong. "I'm a nice guy with a good heart." I would think. "Why can't I find love?"

Finding love in this world was proving more everyday to be more difficult and even more rare than I had first imagined. The pain from each of my experiences over the years soon accumulated and became so unbearable that it forced me to give up completely and so instead, I began searching for ways to escape it. I built barriers around my heart and became selfish. Never, ever, did I think I was hurting anyone by doing so, my frame of mind was tuned to protect myself from pain and pain only. No-one else was going to hurt me again and that was that. When we stop being ourselves 'fully' in anyway - we hurt others because we only give them what we want them to have and not what they actually need from us. Everyone that comes into our lives do so for a purpose, even those who only pop in for a brief moment do for a reason. As they enter our lives, they take from us what they need to grow 'emotionally' as we do from them - we learn and grow from each others experiences in life. If we aren't ourselves during this interaction, meaning, if we are guarded, angry, resentfull or living with any other form of negativity, we run the risk of them taking something from us that could alter the course of their destiny and lead them 'away' from their true path in life rather than helping them to grow and to progrees further along it.

This I never understood until recently. When, for a long time I could never fathom what I was doing wrong in my search, with each failure, I turned my pain and frustration inwards and began to dislike myself. I blamed myself for everything. "I'm boring" I told myself. "I'm ugly." Whatever fitted at the time. I became an emotional punching bag and the hits got harder each time I failed. I began living with negativity. It poisoned my mind and it made me unwell. Negativity is fear, when we fear something, we become negative and therefore we bring down whatever that something may be, thinking that we will feel better about ourselves in the process. We try to poison others against it to feed the fear we feel and to convince ourselves that it is okay to feel this way - but this is what makes unwell. Negativity tricks us into thinking that it is okay to be afraid and that if we are afraid of something then we must convince others to hate what we fear.

What I didn't realize at this point in time was that I was very slowly beginning to learn a lesson in life. For such a long time I had looked to other people to find happiness. I had placed into their hands complete control over the power to make me happy. I had looked to others for acceptance, if I wasn't accepted then I wasn't good enough. I looked to others to love me, because I didn't love myself. It had taken me years to realize that this was very wrong. NO-ONE has the power or the right to decide whether you can be happy or not just in the same way that no-one can make another love them. When someone walks from your life, as hard as it may be at the time, you have to bravely step aside and allow them to walk their own path. They might come back into your life and they might not but one thing that's certain is that your paths are meant to go in different directions at that point in time. Things between you are just not to be and by accepting this, you will allow yourself to move on from the pain it causes, learning and growing stronger as you do.

Unrequited love is as painful as it is confusing. Trying to fully comprehend why someone has upped and left your life is a feat in it's own. Watching someone you love walk away knowing that there is nothing you can do about it is like having your soul ripped out and then placed back into your hands for you to watch cry. How you feel about the situation gets amplified when you have no choice but to try and understand and respect that it is their decision to leave and also their right to make and by truly loving them, we have to let them go. Even although it doesn't make sense, it has to happen for you to learn and to grow from it. As time heals all wounds, it also gives us the answers.

Moving on from a broken heart is one of the bravest things any human being can do for as much as we look to others for help - we always go through it alone. When you find yourself repeatedly in bad relationships, you haven't yet learned your lesson. After a time of this, some people begin to feel that they don't deserve respect and so they will make excuses for their partners behavior and turn a blind eye to all that goes on in future relationships. By doing this they will never learn because they will never stand up and address their problem. Everyone is entitled to respect, everyone is entitled to be happy and to find happiness but finding what will make you happy first has to come from within yourself.

In order to truly love someone, you have to want what's best for them, regardless of your own needs. True love is unconditional and non-judgmental. When you love someone, no matter what they say or what they do, within reason, it is okay. They can hurt you with things they say in a moment of tension but you will always find it in your heart to forgive them when they say sorry. If you don't truly want the best for someone you love, for instance, if you get jealous when they do something without you or if they can progress in a certain area without your help and you feel resentment towards them for it then you can't be truly in love. Feeling this way means that you are looking within that person for your own needs and to help keep your insecurities at bay. You are not complete within yourself.

Being complete within yourself is being happy and by being happy within, you don't need anything from the outside. When you are complete within, it makes you want to give and to share rather than to take and to rely on others for your happiness and your personal security. When you remove the needs of the self, the self will need no more and with this you will only want the best for others. Finding yourself and loving and accepting yourself is the only way you can give yourself completely to another without any false pretenses. Love yourself first and you will love others for real.