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