Love Without A Leash

Unconditional.

We say it like a promise, like a sacred offering. We wrap the word in silk and parade it around like it’s holy. We tattoo it into vows and prayers, whisper it into the hearts of the people we love as if speaking the word alone is enough to sanctify it. But there’s something hiding beneath it, a sharpness no one talks about. A quiet contradiction bleeding through the seams, most people don’t even notice the blood on their hands when they say it. Because most people don’t really mean unconditional. They mean “for now”. They mean “as long as.” They mean “until it hurts.” They mean “I love you...but.”

Unconditional love.

It sounds like safety, doesn’t it? Like the kind of touch that doesn’t recoil. Like a presence that doesn’t run when your voice cracks or your darkness creeps in. It sounds like a home that stays unlocked, even after the third breakdown, the fifth panic spiral, the seventeenth time you swore you were okay when maybe you really weren’t. It sounds like someone who doesn’t just tolerate your unraveling, they choose to kneel beside it. It sounds like forever, but not the dreamy, cinematic kind. Not the kind that only lasts while you’re glowing and agreeable. It’s the kind of forever that shows up when your light burns out. When you’re not soft, or attractive, or wise, or even kind… when your spirit is shaking and you’re clawing at your skin just to stay tethered to something real. It’s the kind that doesn’t flinch when the storm in you comes back for a second round. The kind that doesn’t look away when you become a version of yourself you don’t even recognize. Unconditional love doesn’t just witness the chaos, it withstands it. It doesn't flee the fire. It walks through it, barefoot, just to hold your hand on the other side.

The unfortunate truth is that most people say I love you with a mouthful of but. That “but” is a venom all its own. I love you, but you need to be easier to hold. I love you, but not when your sadness shows up uninvited. I love you, but only if you’re not too broken, not too loud, not too difficult to understand. I love you, but only when loving you doesn’t cost me anything. Only when your shadows stay small and your trauma doesn’t spill out where it can make a mess. They never say the "but" out loud. No, it's sneakier than that. It just hangs there in the silence, coiled like a snake in tall grass. Waiting. Daring you to come close enough so it can strike. Close enough to hand someone your softest parts, your worst fears, your tangled grief, and then suddenly, you feel the sting of being too much.

There’s so much power in that unspoken “but.” It becomes the invisible line between being loved and being abandoned. It makes love conditional, cruel. Love turns into something you have to earn. Something you have to be good enough for. Smile through the sorrow. Swallow the panic. Be inspiring instead of too honest. Be strong instead of shattered. Shrink yourself into a version that doesn’t make them uncomfortable, and maybe they’ll keep right on loving you.

But that’s not love. That’s a leash. That’s performance. That’s “I love you if.” “I love you when.” “I love you as long as you don’t make me sit with anything that scares me.” “I love you as long as you don’t make me face the parts of myself I secretly hate”.

True unconditional love doesn’t back away when your pain shows its teeth. It doesn’t flinch when your darkness spills out, flooding the room. It doesn’t recoil when your healing becomes messy, or when your joy disappears for weeks at a time, when all you have left to offer is shaky breaths and the courage to keep waking up. This kind of love stays. Not out of obligation. Not out of pity. But because it chooses you… mess, madness, magic, and all. It inhales your ache without needing to silence it. It wraps around your grief without breaking from its weight. It sits beside you in the wreckage your hurricane left behind. It’s not waiting until the dust settles or showing up only once your chaos has been swept into something presentable. It’s there when your walls are still falling. When your hands are shaking and you don’t even know how to begin again. It doesn’t ask you to be calm. It breathes with you… slow, steady, deliberate… until your panic starts to loosen its grip. It doesn’t rush you. Doesn’t try to drag you back to the light. It stays in the dark with you, unafraid. Shoulder to shoulder with your sorrow. Steady while you tremble.

Because that’s what unconditional love does: it doesn’t just witness the storm, it endures it with you. Not to rescue you. Not to fix you. But to remind you that even here, even now, even like this, you are not alone and you’re still worth being loved. It doesn’t need you to translate your trauma into a children’s book, stripped of blood, softened at the edges, sanitized for someone else’s comfort. It doesn’t ask you to make your wounds sound like poetry, to water down the ache so it’s easier to digest. It doesn’t flinch at the unedited version of you… the raw truth that doesn't rhyme. It doesn’t hand you ultimatums dressed as compassion. It doesn’t vanish the moment your soul gets too heavy to carry alone. Real unconditional love stays. True unconditional love isn’t the fairytale kind. It doesn’t always look pretty. It’s not grand gestures or romantic declarations written in rose petals. It’s the love that survives the mundane, the messy, the brutal honesty. It’s the hand that doesn’t let go when your voice shakes. The arms that don’t close up when your heart starts unraveling in the middle of the night. It’s not threatened by your truth. It doesn't ask you to hide the parts of yourself that still tremble.

Because love that only stays when it’s easy… isn’t love. It’s comfort in disguise.

I’ve always romanticized this feeling. I used to swear I would know the difference the moment it touches me. I imagined that my jaw would unclench. My spine would soften. I would finally be able to stop apologizing for my depth, for my pain, for the way my grief sometimes spills out in inconvenient places. I’ll finally stop rewriting my sorrow into something prettier just to make it easier to love. I’ll finally feel safe, not just when I’m glowing, but when I’m gasping. When my light goes out and all I have left is the honesty of my shadow. Because in my fantasies, real love doesn’t hiss when my soul gets loud. It doesn’t punish me for falling apart. It doesn’t retreat the moment my healing starts looking less like a sunrise and more like a battlefield. It doesn’t vanish when I’m no longer easy to carry.

Maybe we’re all just aching for that kind of love. A love that doesn’t ask us to be smaller, or quieter, or easier to hold. It’s not about falling in love with who someone could be; it’s about choosing them, exactly as they are. Even when it’s messy. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. God, how I long for that. A love that doesn’t vanish when I unravel. One that stays, not out of duty, not out of fear, not out of some wounded need to fix… but because it wants me. All of me. Even the parts I haven’t figured out how to love yet. I don’t think I’ve fully known that kind of love. Not in its purest form. Because on paper, I’m supposed to have it. I wear the title. I check the box. But love like that… the kind that holds you through the unraveling, that breathes with your grief instead of trying to silence it. It doesn’t live here. It’s not in the room when the light leaves my eyes. It’s not in the silence that follows my sadness. What I have is love with terms and conditions. Love that feels earned, not received. And maybe that’s what aches the most, knowing what it should feel like, and waking up every day in something that only imitates it, living in the space where it isn’t. Still, I want it. With everything in me, I want it. The kind of love that sees every scar, every storm, every tender, trembling truth and doesn’t look away. That doesn’t want to sweep up the wreckage or glue me back into something more attractive, but to honor the breaks. To sit with them. To fill them with something holy. I want the kind of love where the cracks aren’t hidden, they’re highlighted. Where the damage becomes part of the beauty. I want a love that looks at all my fractured places and doesn’t try to erase them… but sees that this made me. This matters. What if I am more precious now, not less? The kind of love that sees every imperfect edge and doesn’t just stay, but kneels down, tenderly, and chooses to touch it all. Not just when I’m easy. Not just when I’m polished. But when I’m in literal pieces. Especially then. I want the love that stays… Not with a “but” attached. Just: I love you. Still. Always. Even carrying scars.

Maybe I’m tired of doing this just on paper, living inside a love that only looks nice from afar. Maybe there has to be more than this. More than the compromises that are really just conditions disguised as care. I want more than love that shows up only when I'm easy, only when I’m quiet. Maybe there’s a love out there that doesn’t just survive my broken parts but celebrates them, that carries gold through the cracks instead of being infuriated about the jagged edges. 

Maybe that’s what we’re all aching for.
Not a love that dazzles.
But just a love that endures.

Author’s Note:
Originally written: August 13, 2022. When it feels wrong to want the love that doesn’t vanish when you unravel.

I wrote this when I was in the thick of trying to decide if staying was love or just survival in disguise. I was exhausted from the weight of being called too much every time I dared to show passion for anything. Living with so many conditions. I was drained from pretending that was enough. I was so lonely. Mentally and emotionally threadbare. And I think what exhausted me most wasn’t just the ache of trying to silence my too much… it was the quiet, daily grief of knowing that love really shouldn’t feel like this. Like a tightrope walk strung between their comfort and my truth. Like something I had to earn with smaller words and softer truths. I wasn’t asking for perfection. I was asking for presence. For grace. For someone to hold the parts of me I didn’t know how to soften. And what I kept getting was a version of love that demanded I shrink. That punished my pain. Weaponized my vulnerability. That vanished when I needed love the most. I wanted what I gave so freely.

I was told I was loved often. The words were there, offered regularly, almost ritualistically. But always with an asterisk. Always with invisible fine print that only revealed itself once I dared to show the parts of me that weren’t convenient. I love you, but tone it down. I love you, but don’t fall apart here. I love you, but only if your grief is quiet, only if your fire doesn’t scorch me, only if your anxiety isn’t too loud, too irrational, too exhausting. That kind of love doesn’t hold you, it contains you. And eventually, it begins to feel like a cage you’re dressing up as a home. 

That kind of love wears you down, it rewrites you. It teaches you to flinch at your own voice. To tiptoe through your emotions so you don’t become a burden. And eventually, you start to believe the lie: that being fully yourself is somehow asking too much. So, you internalize it. You start policing your own soul. You hear their voice inside your head when you feel too much. You pre-reject yourself before anyone else can. And that is the slowest kind of soul death. The kind you survive, but barely.

I don’t live in that lie anymore.

I’ve stepped out of that quiet erosion. I’ve since chosen myself. I’ve chosen my voice over their false comfort. And the relief of finally being able to breathe without apology… it’s something I’m still getting used to. It’s terrifying and holy, like rebirth. Like tasting freedom for the first time and realizing how long you’ve been starving for it.

This piece was written in the in-between. In the unraveling. In the exhausted war of knowing there had to be more and daring to believe I might actually deserve it. It was written with shaky hands and a heart stretched thin. I was still inside the ache, still half-convinced I was asking too much just by wanting to feel safe, whole, and held.

And now, from the other side, I can say this with everything in me: there is more. And we are not too much for craving it. We are just enough for the kind of love that doesn’t flinch. The kind that stays. The kind that sees every crack and calls it sacred.