How I Learnt Love
I didn’t grow up hearing the words “I love you.”
In my family, love wasn’t spoken –it was demonstrated. My parents worked. Constantly. Love looked like sacrifice, stability, showing up every day whether you were tired or not. You knew you were cared for because food was on the table, school fees were paid, and nobody ever stopped moving.
So I learned early that love meant responsibility.
It meant being useful. Reliable. Needed.
It also meant not asking for too much. As a child, that made sense. As an adult, it quietly shaped everything –my work ethic, my relationships, my tolerance for exhaustion. I mistook endurance for devotion. I believed staying was proof of care, even when staying cost me myself.
Costa Rica slowed that belief down.
In Golfito, nothing rushed me. Days had no urgency. No one measured my worth by output. Love showed up in smaller, unfamiliar ways –neighbours who checked in, shared meals, quiet company by the pool, dogs that trusted me without conditions.
No one needed me to perform.
And that’s when I realized how uncomfortable that felt at first.
Without responsibility, who was I?
Without usefulness, did I still matter?
It took time to see that love doesn’t require constant effort to exist. It doesn’t need you to exhaust yourself out to earn it. Sometimes it’s just presence –mutual, unforced, gentle.
Love, I learned, isn’t always loud or productive. It doesn’t keep score. It doesn’t demand proof through sacrifice.
It allows rest. That understanding didn’t arrive all at once. It arrived in fragments during long walks, quiet evenings, unremarkable days that somehow felt full.
Costa Rica didn’t give me a new definition of love.
It stripped away the one that was hurting me.
And in its place, it left space.