“My mother always told me that love wouldn’t come easily for me,” she’d say, almost in passing, yet the weight of her words would always settle heavily in my chest. At the time, I’d brush it off, thinking it was just another one of those things parents say, perhaps out of concern, perhaps out of an understanding of how challenging life can be. But as the years passed, I found myself returning to her words more and more, wondering if maybe—just maybe—she saw something in me that I hadn’t fully understood yet.

Maybe she saw my restless spirit—the part of me that’s always yearning for something more, the part that refuses to be tamed or confined by anything, including love. I’ve always been fiercely independent, not just in my actions but in my heart. The idea of losing myself in a relationship, of compromising so much of who I am just to fit into someone else’s life, has always felt like a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

It’s not that I’m afraid of love. Far from it. But I’m afraid of love that demands me to shrink, to become smaller, or to compromise my essence. I wonder if that’s what my mother was warning me about—the kind of love that requires too much sacrifice, the kind that doesn’t allow me to remain whole.

Deep down, I hope love isn’t as complicated as she made it seem. I don’t want to believe that the things I hold most dear—my sense of adventure, my independence, my refusal to settle—will stand in the way of finding someone who truly sees me. I want to believe that when the right person comes along, they won’t love me despite these things, but because of them. That they’ll understand that these qualities are not barriers, but rather the very essence of who I am—and that they’ll embrace them, not as obstacles, but as the foundation of a love that’s as free and limitless as my spirit.