Bruised but Still Loving
They say a girl’s first love is her father. But what happens when that love is just a void? When the space he should have filled becomes an ache you carry like a scar?
I grew up searching for him — in the eyes of every man I met, in friendships that drained me, in relationships that promised forever but slipped away. I wore my heart like an apology, hoping someone might see the emptiness inside me and choose to stay anyway. And every time they left, I blamed myself, quietly wondering if I was too broken to be loved.
I wrote about it in my journal, words spilling out like confessions I couldn’t say out loud:
I searched for you in every face,
A ghost I could never touch.
I watered my wounds with hope,
But you never bloomed.
Still, I kept loving —
Not to find you,
But to find myself.
But this story isn’t just about absence. It’s about discovery. About the love I thought I didn’t deserve, and the man who showed me that even the most shattered hearts can learn to beat again.
This is the story of how I lost myself, how I pieced myself back together, and how love finally found me — not as a replacement, but as a reminder that I was whole all along