Survival Leaves Little Room for Love

Sometimes people aren’t single because they cannot find anyone.

Sometimes life has required so much of them that tenderness had to wait.

For the last few years, I was finishing my doctorate, struggling financially, and helping care for my parents. I watched my father decline and then lost him while dementia slowly took my mother's mind away. There were houses to sell, yards and bills to manage, and constant dealings with Medicaid and nursing homes. I simply kept handling whatever needed to be done.

I became very good at surviving.

But survival has a way of narrowing your world. You focus on getting through the next day, the next bill, the next crisis, and the next responsibility. Eventually, you stop thinking about falling in love. Not because you no longer want it, but because there is no room left inside you for one more feeling.

I don’t think I consciously closed my heart.

I think I simply put it somewhere safe while I handled everything else.

I know I’m not alone in that. There are people who have spent years caring for parents, raising children, struggling financially, rebuilding after divorce, grieving losses, or fighting battles no one else can see.

They haven’t given up on love.

Love has just had to wait.

But eventually, something can begin to change. The part of us that misses closeness, excitement, laughter, affection, and having someone to look forward to starts waking up again.

We can

begin to realize that we do not have to spend the rest of our lives only surviving what life has taken from us.

We can also become open to whatever—and whoever—it may still have waiting for us.