Love
Love is…the hardest topic to write on. This is the third time I’m trying to write this essay. Most everything else is grist to the mill. Death, life, hunger: the words flow easily. Passing strangers, old friends, experiences: a little thought, some effort but the words don’t desert me. Hate, anger, guilt: very draining to write about but not impossible.
The one topic that stumps me each time I attempt an essay should be the easiest of all: Love. I feel so much love, it should be pouring out on the screen. Every day, love manifests in different ways. Cooking a meal, a phone call to ask if you’ve reached, a back massage. An emoji from a friend, studious silence from another, love is strange like that. A smile, a touch, just a memory. But there is no lack of the giving or receiving of it. So why is there a block when I write about the big L?
Perhaps because unlike every other emotion I write about, this one has a future. It isn’t mostly about what has gone before; in fact, it’s the one thing that has more to do with my present and future than my past. That makes it an unique emotion to someone who nurtures a very unhealthy pact with the years gone by. Also, love doesn’t walk alone. It brings with it hope and faith in the small things and one doesn’t jinx these precious things by talking too much about them.
I spent too many years doling out love in miserly portions. If someone tried to play Oliver and ask for more, I put him or her out for sale. Consequently, I was often and accurately termed a bitch. Friends, lovers, family shared the common and unpleasant experience of the sharp edge of my tongue. I thought nothing of hurting people’s feelings, as long as it meant my defenses were up, the barricade unbreached, the walls unscaled.
Love though. It is relentless. The more you push it away, the higher the wave that rushes you off your feet. Maybe this is menopausal talk but my forties have been such a revelation when it comes to love. It’s getting easier all the time. To say words of love to the people who matter. To show love to them and to the world around me too. To learn the hard lessons of kindness and gentleness. To love myself a little better than before, give myself a break. Oh, I’m still aggressive and abrasive and not everyone’s cup of tea. But this love business is a process of evolution. I’m hopeful of the results. Like the MRI I spent weeks dreading and obsessing over, and which turned out to be a calm and peaceful experience, I see now that I wasted too many years worrying about the fallout of bringing the old barriers down. Now that they are gone for good, I can laugh at my silly fears.
There is irony in this lala land though. Not everyone wants this love apparently. The more I reach out, the harder I try, the farther away they retreat. I haven’t given up yet but I can see that day in the near future when I stop flogging dead emotions and make my peace with the absence of some love from my life.
Let it go. Leave it behind. Let it be. This too is love. At the end of days, once the heartbreak is done, the passion wasted and the resignation overcome, this too is a measure of love. Learning to let go of the ones who are going anyway. Holding on with light hands and a light heart to the ones who choose to stay.
Of the ten people I love most in the world, two are dead. Two want me to stay away from them, leave them alone, forget about them – that’s the tough one. Five of the remaining six are my family and my best friend. And the last? Finally, and I fought it forever, that person is me. It is tough love, I don’t know any other kind I would trust around myself. But it’s progress. Learning to go a little easy on myself. The willingness to look myself in the eye and to like who I see most of the time. These are small but hard won victories. In the end, a grand love for the ages may be what the poets dream about. For me, I’ll take the peace that this small world of love brings me every day.
Every word you wrote resonates with the hum of my soul. The forties have been full of revelations to us indeed.