SO IS IT WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME

You are right.  You are probably not loved enough by someone very close to you.

It might be your spouse, your sibling, or your close friend.  Your girl/boy friend does not love you with all of the dignity, honor, attention that you are meant to have.  Perhaps your priest/minister does not have the level of respect and love that you deserve.

You are a good person (mostly.)  You try to treat others with love and respect.  You have your faults but they don’t make you any less of a person.  Is it really that much to ask?

It is a terrible thing.  It is a problem that has been with us since day one when Adam and Eve chose selfishness over love.  Immediately, seeking to be loved over loving became the norm.  By the time we get to their children we read about fratricide over jealousy.  

Sacramental marriage is supposed to be the start of a cure for this.  Think about the vows that are given: They say nothing about what each person expects.  They are a promise to minister to the other person all the days that we are both living.  

Now, of course, if both are true to their vows, they also will experience love.  That is the way human culture is supposed to be.  That is the way being Catholic is supposed to be: 1.2 billion people looking to love and serve each other rather than 1.2 billion people looking to suck love and ministry out of each other.  Jesus says to us, “I have come to serve, not be served,” and he was crucified.  

Sick. 

But we are called to follow Him - to begin the healing of our human nature.

It seems rather bleak doesn’t it?  This fallen and hurt world licking its wounds and trying desperately to be respected, honored, and loved?  Yet the path to it is not so much focusing on sucking such things out of other people as though it were a right (even if, in a way it is) but to offer it.  All those bodies of need you see walking around are just as unloved, hurting and seeking to have the hole in themselves filled.  If we saw this clearly, how different the world might be.

That is not to say to let yourself to be bled dry.  Nobody takes care of the care giver.  Take care of yourself.  That is not selfish.  Nobody benefits if you crash and burn.  But do remember that all of the emptiness that you might feel, that terrible hole in the center of you chest - your have a God that will more than fill it.  Maybe - and most likely - not in this world for many - but He will.  And for those who suffer the most, His healing will be all the more sweeter.  Know that your Father knows your state and has every intention of making it up to you.  In the meantime: Love.