What Real Love Feels Like

My children taught me what love was. Not a partner. Not a parent. Two small humans who loved me before I’d done anything to earn it.

That’s the thing about children. They don’t audit you. They don’t keep a ledger. They don’t calculate your worth based on what you can do for them or how small you can make yourself or whether you’ve cleaned the kitchen to an acceptable standard.

They just love you. Stupidly. Completely. With sticky hands and bad timing and a ferocity that would flatten mountains.

I didn’t know love felt like that. I thought love was something you earned. Something conditional. Something that could be withdrawn at any moment for reasons that were always somehow your fault.

My parents loved me with conditions. My partners loved me with conditions. Every significant relationship I’d ever had came with terms and conditions that I was expected to read, understand, and comply with.

Then a baby grabbed my finger and looked at me like I was the whole world. Not because I’d done anything. Not because I’d earned it. Just because I was there. Just because I was hers.

I cried. Not delicate tears. Ugly crying. The kind that comes from somewhere so deep you didn’t know it was there. Twenty-three years of not being loved properly bursting open like a dam made of tissue paper.

She didn’t care that I was crying. She just held my finger tighter.

That moment taught me more about love than every relationship I’d ever had combined. Love isn’t earned. It isn’t conditional. It isn’t a reward for good behaviour or a transaction with a balance sheet.

Love is a baby holding your finger while you fall apart. And holding on tighter when you do.

My children saved me. Not from him. From the version of love I’d accepted as normal. They showed me what the real thing looks like so I could stop settling for the forgery.

I’m still learning. Still unlearning the old software. Still catching myself trying to earn something that was already given.

But I know what it feels like now. And I will never mistake anything less for the real thing again.