The lessons of love are written in pain
If I had written this book when I was thirty, I think it would have been different. Back then, I had a different perspective on life and people. I was entangled in those sweet and bitter waves of love, passion, and suffering. If I had written this story then, I would have confessed to you about the most intense nights, the warmest tears, the most earth-shattering cries of happiness or pain. I would have told you about the ambitions that drove me to overcome nearly any obstacle. But in those times, I lacked peace… and a broader perspective.
However, to this day, the essence of my being has remained unchanged. I still possess the same strength, the same vulnerability. Over time, clarity has also emerged. Now, I know what mattered and what did not. And I believe I have gathered many valuable life lessons, though I am aware that I will continue to learn until my final day.
During this fiery Australian summer, filled with sun and storms, I began to reflect on the past… To let the voice of the woman within me shout, sing, scatter her emotions among the lilac bushes, and reveal her unspoken thoughts to herself, to God, and to the migratory birds. A long flock of thoughts has also spilled into the story that follows.
I did not grow up under the gentle gaze of my mother, so I lacked a feminine role model to guide me. Did I find the model of a woman in films or books? Perhaps. Yet I always felt incomplete. I believed true fulfillment—and the sense of being whole—would only come from finding love.
The list of a woman’s sufferings seems endless when she has not learned what self-love is, when she is not fully aware in every moment of life of who she is.
Her pain is caused less by the world and more by her own thoughts, by the way she sees herself, by the depth of her perceptions.
These are the pains that stem from the little she receives, whether in love or in the appreciation of those around her. And she will not be able to soothe her suffering herself, for her heart holds love only for others, not for herself.
She will choose a cold heart, believing it to be warm, and will cry again, in secret, just to preserve a faint trace of harmony and hope in that relationship. The woman who does not love herself perceives her worth through the way others treat her. And those around her will wound her with their indifference.
She will continue to lament her failures, forgetting her victories. She will detest her weaknesses, while simultaneously ignoring her strengths.
And yet, she will strive to be a strong woman, though she has always been strong. That woman will remain haunted by pain as long as she doesn’t realize who she truly is.
But the day she feels that intimate warmth, when she bathes in self-love and looks outward through the window of her heart, everything will change. Her pain will transform into light. And that light will guide her toward a new sense of well-being, toward a new path. Then, she will understand that what she has been searching for her entire life has always been within her.
I believe a woman must climb to the highest steps, both spiritual and emotional, to achieve victory—in life and in love.
I have experienced the most intense moments of happiness when I felt my own strength and used it to transform my dreams into reality. I never set limits for myself. I sought them out.
And sometimes, I was amazed by how far my dreams and my abilities could take me.
If I were to give advice to the teenage girl I once was, I would say…
‘Never forget to love wisely!’
In life, it feels like a miracle to see how valued you are at times by strangers—a small pain to feel how those close to you often forget to appreciate you. But it is a divine blessing to feel constantly how much you mean to yourself.
This book is a testament to triumph over life’s harsh trials. No matter how life’s experiences unfold—whether gentle or harsh—they can be versatile, unique, and precious. I believe the evolution and refinement of identity are largely tied to ourselves, though, of course, also to the environment in which we live.
The story that follows is inspired by real events. The protagonist, Ana, though shaped by a certain environment, rebels against the norms and hardships, responding with actions to the ethical questions of living decently in a world that is sometimes unfair and unequal. Under the influence of various forces, both internal and external, her victories and defeats are the result of a long chain of causal events. It is the battle of identity striving to develop in an authentic way, aligned with purpose and truth.
Exerpt from the book “Between Kiss and Pain,“ by Anisoara Laura Mustetiu.
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