Love, something to want or to fear?

As yesterday a fuchsite ruby made its way to my stone collection, I was reminded of love and healing of the heart chakra. Last year around august I was reading Zuleikha by Guzel Shamilyevna Yakhina, the story of a young tatar lady and her life journey from home to gulag and to self discovery and ove. I cried almost a full day after I finished the book feeling that while Zuleikha in the book found herself and love in pain and misery, I could not love. Because I was even more afraid of love that I was of myself.

The path to love was going via seeing my own truth and my full own reflection in the mirror of the others and in accepting it. Though I knew that taking the path to whom I was and to love was a choice that I could take. And for that I had to walk through my own masks, that of joy and happiness excluding the pain, that of full independence and self reliance excluding vulnerability and connection. I am walking this path now and sometimes is harder and sometimes is easier. I am afraid to fail and take the wrong path, to disappoint and not see myself outside the respect that I built through my job, to ignore my own needs to the point of full anger and self directed aggression. And then is a choice to take the fear, the doubt, the pain, the inability to ask for help, anger, etc and walk toward my true self, connection and love.