You can learn a lot about love in a very short amount of time.

At times, it can be because you haven’t healed a part of you that thinks you have to find and hold onto it just so you can be somebody to others. To feel like you are somebody to yourself because someone is at your side.

That’s when you get reminders, or even revelations of how you were acting in the pursuit of even short-term passion. How you kept submitting to emotionally distant people that, if you’re lucky, will breadcrumb you into thinking you have a chance to even hold hands.

And like most painful patterns, the concept of love starts at home.

A few are lucky enough to grow up in an environment where they teach the importance of prioritizing self-love, self-acceptance, and building high self-esteem. It can hopefully attract like-minded connections that could be, or be connected to, the life partner that you’ve been manifesting about in silence.

For others, it takes a while. Decades, even. Heartbreaks received and even delivered all towards a key point where they learn what it really takes to have a healthy romance.

It first starts with having a solid relationship with yourself. Mostly by forming. reforming, and respecting your boundaries that filter out what no longer serves you, and draws in what does without connecting with others out of desperation.

And it doesn’t have to be a perfect relationship with yourself. Healing is nonlinear, so there will be days that you don’t have the energy for it. You just have to stay consistent with your own emotional terms and conditions that can prevent the old desires from taking hold again.

Because you can’t expect a love interest or a full partner to respect you if you don’t respect yourself. And even then, you have to make sure you don’t risk crossing the lines of narcissism, sociopathy, and more.

The heart, both in spirit and metaphor, is a powerful, fragile, and dangerous thing to handle in ourselves.

It’s why there are those who refuse to give out their hearts ever again, for their own reasons. While others are justified in being more selective in who they give their hearts to, especially those seeking long-term commitments.

And for those that do, or want to find that life partner, class will always be in session. Because you will learn a lot about love in a short and long amount of time.

What you do with those lessons will determine if you’re meant to retake the class like I had to, recently, or be in a place to be both the student and the teacher, like I’m aiming to be, again.

Kingston Priest