It began how most of my curious behaviours did back then: after watching a TED talk. Tucked into bed, door closed, lights off, brightness down. This was my chapel. Scrawled on scrap paper stuck to the walls were lyrics, poems and pictures drawn with friends; my stained-glass windows, my altars to aspects of myself I was learning to worship.

Most evenings, before sleep had the good sense to massage the day’s worries from my mind, I took myself to the TEDx Talks YouTube account and scrolled their videos until one of them caught my attention. This night’s talk had love in the title. Any video I came across that spoke of the power, mathematics, science, strength or philosophy of love had my attention. All I wanted was the secret to never-ending love. Romantic love, self-love, for others to feel as loved as I did, to feel the love I had for them.

Because, you see, before this point, or perhaps even up until then, I’d occasionally felt an existential dread that I wasn’t quite loveable enough. Not in the right way. I was too loud and told jokes that weren’t funny. My smile was too big; I was too tall; I emasculated the boys around me; I liked being in charge and focused on details others couldn’t care less about. I was a peculiar girl with the impression of my prepubescent buck teeth still visible in my top lip with feet exactly like my dad’s. I was very ginger and coming to terms with my freckles. I believed that people didn’t have crushes on redheads if they didn’t have a thing for redheads. I was either a fetish or a freak of nature. I let myself believe these things from time to time. Felt them enter my thoughts like a fly through a window.

Around nine or ten years old, while my peers appeared carefree and lithe, I felt a heaviness I could only associate with the weight of self-criticism. It was around this time I took an A4 piece of paper and a ballpoint pen and wrote,

‘FAT

STUPID

UGLY’.

Giving each word a line of its own before Blu-Tacking it to my bedroom wall directly opposite my bed. I told myself it would remind me of the things that I was. It was on the wall all of two days before my mum saw and asked me about it. I told some lie about it representing all the things that I wasn’t. I can’t say how convincing I was but when I came back from my dad’s house, she’d taken the page, flipped it over and covered it with words that she thought about me. Beautiful, intelligent, loved, thoughtful, funny, insightful, kind, clever, loving, strong, caring, awesome, friendly, wonderful, a good sister, a good daughter. The page was full. That was love. I was loved. And if it was true that I was loved, then these things she’d written down, and told me often, must also be true.

I stared at myself in the mirror that night before bed. I went so close my breath blurred the glass. I could see the uncertain edge of every freckle and the green strokes that made up my iris. I made a decision then that I know changed the trajectory of my life. I looked at the face that I had been so unsure about, at the girl who’d called herself these horrible things and come so close to thinking they were true. I looked until all I could see was a face and then let my eyes lose focus and with it every gross thing I’d said. From a small corner of my mind I heard a new narrative begin to form. I willed myself first to listen and then to agree. I tried saying it out loud. You. Are. Beautiful. I watched as the power of these words found purchase, my eyes came back into focus and appraised the girl looking back at me. You are beautiful. And then, I was.

Lying in bed poised to watch a TED talk about love, I knew I was beautiful but I didn’t know if I was attractive. If boys thought about me when I wasn’t around the way I thought about them. Wondering when our smiles across the courtyard would turn into holding hands on our way to class and sneaking a kiss at the end of the day. To be thought of, to be valued, in this romantic, dreamlike way. As far as I was concerned, I was one TED talk away from learning The Secret.

The context with which the talk was delivered in has faded over time, but what I took away from that video, lying in the dark with the wind whipping at my window: Meet every person you come across with love, pure and unconditional. People deserve unconditional love and to love unconditionally. I closed my laptop and thought about the people I didn’t like very much, about my classmates, my friends, my teachers, the strangers I walked past on the way to school. Could I love them all in some way? I promised myself to try until proven otherwise.

The next day I went to school and told people I loved them. I finished conversations with it. Told friends as I passed them in the hallway. Said it to teachers after passing me a worksheet. I was loving people all over the school. On the field, at my desk, in assembly, in line at the canteen, in between the shelves of library books, at the bus stop, in choir, from the back of the class, at lunch time. I told complete strangers I loved them – some of them even said it back.

I bundled it up with farewells. Love you, bye! was my mantra. I didn’t want to leave people without telling them I loved them. And I meant it every time. I believed I meant it every time. For months I told anyone who’d listen that I loved them. Not one person took it the wrong way, believing I was proclaiming deep, unrequited feelings for them. No one took it the right way, either. Sure, people said it back – but not the ones I wanted. Unrequited feelings for me were never revealed during this time.

After a couple of months my perspective shifted and my evolving maturity found these vocal proclamations of love uncomfortable. The reflex of saying I love you began to feel cheap and gimmicky. I’d said it too much and too often to mean anything anymore. It still held true that I loved everyone I met, but the need to say it became less essential. Love to me wasn’t the ‘L’ word that people built shrines to and worked hard to feel. Love was a given.

A TED talk made me realise that love wasn’t something reserved for the people you hold in the highest regard, love was for everyone. You could give more or less of it to whoever you choose, but kindness, respect and caring all come from love. You can’t like someone without loving them. Like and love aren’t two ends of a spectrum where one is more than the other, they are branches of the same tree.

I took loving people too literally, but I don’t regret the loving. I wore my love on my sleeve and was no more rejected than I had been before. If anything, people just didn’t think I meant it. If you asked me today if I loved you: I do. However, like another language, you might have to translate what love means to you.

Not long ago someone walking ahead of me dropped something. When I gave it back to them, I was surprised to hear them say, Thanks, love ya. The memories of when I’d done the same thing came rushing back. How surprised people must’ve been when I told them I loved them. How lovely to be told you are loved. 

Just loud enough for her to hear I replied,

Love you, too.