is it better to love and lose than to never love at all?

a hopeless romantic's valentine's day musings

Happy Valentine’s Day lovers! I’ll be the first to confess I’m jealous of all the lovebirds. Not in an all-consuming way, I know my jealousy is a fleeting emotion brought upon by my insatiable desire for love. However, I have to admit the best part about today is that I can confess to you how desperately I long for love without judgment. Tomorrow we can pretend I never said anything. And I do— I do long for love. Not in the same ways I did as a young girl; my life doesn’t feel empty without it. In fact, I have so much love in my life sometimes I don’t know what to do with it all. I guess I should be more precise: I long for romantic love. But that’s no big surprise. I’m nothing if not a hopeless hopeful romantic.

Love is on the brain and I’ve been thinking a lot about one of the poems from my first book, Growing Pains:

i am a mosaic made up of former lovers and fumbled friendships. there are songs i listen to that transport me back to moments already lived—moments that remind me of the illusion of myself. the hollows of my body do not belong to me; i love things because someone else loved them first. the way i laugh and cry and kiss and fuck was taught, not given. i am constantly being thrown the scraps of other people’s lives and calling it my existence.

- mosaic, Sierra Madison

Poets are predictable, aren’t we? Every poem I write says the same thing: I have loved and lost and I carry the pieces of it with me every day—forever haunted by lingering memories that stab through my heart at the most inconvenient times. But I hold onto it all because it is a gift to be stained by the remnants of love, even if it hurts.

Last year, many people close to me went through difficult breakups, myself included, and I was honoured they came to me for advice on how to let go and move forward. They told me they felt like they were drowning in the pain of heartbreak. I nodded because I understood, perhaps better than most. Nothing I told them was groundbreaking. All I really said was: to be loved is to be changed. You cannot go back to who you were before you fell in love—the person who emerges after heartbreak is someone you have yet to meet. A new you.

On the outskirts of heartbreak, you’ll realise you’ve been forever changed by love’s fragile embrace. At first, you’ll look in the mirror and fail to recognize yourself. This can be terrifying, but it is also liberating. It is scary to know you cannot return to who you were before your heart merged with a lover’s— before your body eased into their presence and suddenly you felt less like an I and more like a we.

Fear not, for love lingers. Its departure leaves leftovers.

While writing ‘mosaic’ I was reflecting on how my existence, my very Self, felt like a potpourri of everyone I’ve ever loved— every friend I’ve lost, every lover that has walked away, every almost that never fully transpired. When I first wrote it, almost half a decade ago now, I remember ostensibly recognising that reality as burdensome. I no longer felt like I belonged to myself, my existence suddenly delineated by loves I could no longer touch.

When I reread it today, I view it in a different light. It is a privilege to be so full of love, even if it is no longer mine to hold. The pieces of it still cling to me, like the train of a dress, following behind me in a memorising haze of innocence. In a way, these fragments of love will always belong to me, it’s still mine despite being unable to touch it. I have been shaped by a beautiful medley of love, patched together over the years:

My vocabulary is full of phrases an old friend used to say. One of my favourite restaurants was introduced to me by someone I went on a first date with and never saw again. Whenever I’m at a sports bar and see the soccer football team my ex cheered for playing, I secretly hope they win. I still make my tea the same way an old friend’s mum did the night I got my heart broken for the first time. All these little souvenirs love leaves behind, forever entombed within me.

How beautiful is that? How beautiful is it that love lingers in those ways? How beautiful is it to remember that the love was there, it existed. I’m humbled to hold all these tiny fragments of lost love close to my chest as eternal proof that I’ve loved and been loved. Selfishly, I hope to have left my mark on them, as they have on me.

Although today I am longing to be in love, I’m confident it will visit me again. In the meantime, I’m letting go of the notion that heartbreak is a stone meant to weigh me down. Instead, I’ve learned to look at the loss of love as a cave to hibernate in—somewhere safe to collect myself before embarking on a new chapter, a new adventure. Why chase love when I’m clearly so full of it, when I’m made up entirely by it. Lovers leave but they don’t take the love with them. I’ve never lost love, I’m made and unmade by it every day. My very essence is stained with it, and I’m forever grateful for that.

To let go is to accept that we cannot go back to who we were before. To let go is to treasure the shattered pieces of love that make up your soul. A mosaic is beautiful because of its broken pieces, not despite it.