Today was an emotionally difficult day, and I’m still searching for reasons why. Because nothing really happened.

Today I felt a guilt like no other.

I wanted to be loved.

And for that, I cowered within myself, ashamed of desiring one of the most basic human instincts. I wanted someone to hold me and care for me. To just be there, in that moment, and care.

This is rare for me. I don’t do this. I’m stubbornly independent. I don’t need anyone. I don’t want anyone. But today, those things faded. Today I did want and need somebody.

And it scared me.

Because I felt an acutely horrific guilt for wanting something that most people take for granted.

And yet here I am, questioning why I deserve one of the basics of life. Nurturing love. I never heard the words I love you as a child, a teenager or an adolescent. I didn’t know hugs without sexual intention. I didn’t learn that needing someone could simply mean needing comfort.

And the tears flowed so frighteningly today.

A depression settled over me, and it hurt. It made my stomach flip, my heart wilt and my resolve falter. Because when you push everyone away because you believe you aren’t good enough, eventually you hurt yourself in exactly the way you’ve always known how.

It’s rare that I crave love. Loneliness doesn’t particularly bother me. I’m happy on my own ninety-nine percent of the time. I genuinely am.

But there is that one percent.

That tiny, inconvenient, terrifying one percent when the world feels like it’s crumbling around you and you watch the silhouettes of other people sharing their lives and their love with each other.

And you wonder what that must feel like.

You wonder why you’re not capable of it.

Why you’re not loveable enough for it.

Why everyone else seems to have been taught how to need and be needed while you learnt how to survive without either.

Today I wanted somebody to hold me.

Maybe the saddest part isn’t that nobody did.

Maybe it’s that I felt guilty for wanting them to.