Dedicated to those I have loved, those whom I love, and those who I will love.
Love is a strange feeling; it is an emotion we all strive to have, but can all the same bring us the most pain. Some people tend to push it away, some choose to embrace it, but it’s different for everyone; the way we experience, show, give, feel love… none of our experiences are copies of one another when it comes to the feeling. Though love is a universal human emotion, each of us approach it differently, and some of us tend not to approach it at all… but quite strangely we all have felt it or will feel it, eventually, at some point in time.
It’s important to recognize that our ideas of love can stem from anywhere and everywhere; from those twisted perceptions of love built into romance novels, or teen dramas, or the toxic relationships around us, or our parents’ relationship. But maybe, that isn’t the love you desire. And maybe you don’t know what the “right” love is. They say, “when you know, you know.” That when you’re in love, when you find the love of your life, it will all become clear and every other perception of the idea will be shattered into a million pieces, because that was what you’ve been looking for your entire life — that feeling of love. But how will you know? Do we all know ourselves that well? Do we understand our wants and needs in a way that when we find ourselves in a situation that seems wrong, we will break it off because it isn’t love and it’s more of a hindrance to our actual recognition of the emotion? I think it’s hard to say.
There’s an unhealthy love and a healthy love and we should all want the latter, but our minds may have a vendetta against us. Some of us know neither form currently. Some of us know both and will tend to advise others in order to protect them from what we believe is unhealthy. Some of us are in an unhealthy state and constantly think “it will get better” or “they deserve another chance” but sometimes, there are no changes to be made, no adjustments, just a severed tie, a burnt bridge. We confuse the healthy and the unhealthy due to our human experience… and the fact that there seems to be a desire for toxicity in some situations, to keep things “lively” or “interesting.” Its idiotic. But we don’t leave. We play this game of push and pull, and hope that one day we will once again feel that healthy version of love that will keep us warm and hopeful and happy and excited… even though that flame has long burnt out. It isn’t worth waiting around for and it isn’t worth all the pain and heartache you will experience through it. But we don’t leave because that’s all we know. We recognize that unhealthiness, that hopelessness, that desire, that feeling of entrapment as our home — we recognize it as the only love we’ve ever known, thus the only thing we can do is wait.
It would be helpful for some of us to realize that most of it isn’t even love. The feeling is attachment: a hold on everyone involved, not easily severable. But there are times where the attachment needs to be interrupted in order for one to learn that it wasn’t love that kept you there. It was the attachment you felt, that feeling that you couldn’t leave — you aren’t allowed to leave. What about all you’ve done together? You have to stay. Because if you go, where will all the memories go? Where will all the investments, those late night conversations, those thoughtful gifts, those love letters, those experiences, go? It seems wasteful to let it go, so I have to keep it. However, it is a disservice to yourself and those involved to stay in an unhealthy situation due to mere attachment.
Love is a powerful force, and attachment is the same in that sense. Love can stop us from picking up a blade, it can keep us from saying things that might hurt someone, but attachment and love may keep us in a horrible state of mind and a bad environment, such as an abusive relationship. Love can be a force for good, and a force for bad; when someone loves you, manipulation can come easily, pushing their boundaries can come easily. The ease at which the boundary between good and bad can be crossed is worrying. The unconditional characteristic of love is concerning, and that feeling of attachment is not any less concerning because we falter between being in love and being attached, and commit ourselves unconditionally in both ways, possibly leading to our own demise.
Yes, there are people we love unconditionally. Yes, there are people we push boundaries and make changes for but we also must learn how to do that for ourselves. When we give that unconditionality to others, we tend to get ourselves in situations that cause us more pain than necessary. When love starts to change, when you start to be treated horribly, in ways you never believed love could be experienced, but you continue to provide love, regardless of whether you’re getting it back, that is where unconditionality can be an issue. And that unconditionality is painful to watch from the outside, though we don’t often notice it until someone points it out to us, and when it is pointed out, we often don’t know what to do. How are you to get yourself out of a situation that you’ve built and put your everything into? How are you going to get out of something where your attachment has started to outweigh your well-being?
Apart from attachment, love remains a bewildering feeling.
It can be found in the most melancholy of places: the hospital as one passes, the graveyard as one grieves. Just the opposite, it is found in the beds of couples, in the arms of a new mother, at the playground between new friends. That’s the peculiar thing about the feeling. Love transcends almost every place, every time — even every feeling. We can feel love at our lowest and give love at rock bottom, it’s the only thing that we can give. We can feel it at our highest, we can give it at our greatest moments. Sometimes we can’t feel it at all… sometimes we don’t know that we have love, or that we are giving it to others when we, ourselves, need it most. Love may be one of the magnificent feelings… but it can be the most tumultuous, confusing, painful universal human experience that we all will endure.
We don’t often notice a lot until we’re told. Sometimes we don’t know we’re in love until after the fact, or until we’re left for dead. Sometimes we don’t know that the love is lost until later on. We just don’t know.
There are so many different types of love that surround us, that we may not even be able to differentiate between them; lines begin to blur and change, a painting of ambiguity paints itself in every window and door to love, and suddenly we don’t know what feelings are platonic, or romantic, or other. The love we have for our family differs from the love we have for our partner, which differs from the love we have for our pets, which differs from the love we have for our friends, which differs from the love we have for material items, which differs from the love we have for ourselves.
Some of us feel we don’t deserve to have love. But we all deserve it.
I believe that… to be loved is to be prioritized and protected, to be cared for and to be able to confide in one another. Someone I love will have me and only me and keep me and only me and will not confuse my feelings nor hurt them. They will accept my flaws, my pain, my past, and accept my goals, my desires, and my future. They will look at me with such passion and such curiosity, that people will know… that is what love looks like. And I believe we all deserve that feeling.
Sometimes I worry that, maybe, I will never truly experience that full-rounded love that I desire. And perhaps that is okay. I am not searching for it. I’ve found love and I’m doing my best to give it back and to feel it and to keep it. Feeling love is difficult for me. Embracing love is difficult for me. But I hope that one day I will be able to do so.
But I must love myself as well. As we all must, to an extent. We cannot gain our love from outside sources at all times. However, loving oneself is not as simple as it may seem. Some of us were programmed to love and appreciate others, and never ourselves. We are constantly picking ourselves apart as human beings. It is true, we are not perfect, but the way we judge ourselves in the mirror, the way we speak negatively about ourselves, hurts us. To unlearn those ways in which we feel negatively about ourselves is a task that will keep us occupied for as long as our mind sees fit.
Though it may seem impossible, we can all learn to love — and love ourselves — in the way we desire. We can learn what we want and what we need, and sometimes this will occur through relationships, sometimes this will occur alone, sometimes it won’t occur until it seems that we have become desperate and held underwater in a sea of emotions that has us drowning. But we all have the capability of loving, being loved, and learning how to give and get love, and to feel loved.
Love will not be easy to decipher for anyone. It is something that we must constantly work on, building and mending relationships with others, with ourselves, with everything around us. But eventually we will all have it. We all deserve to feel it. Eventually your time will come, your love will be present, and you will receive it much the same, and you will give it as you can, and you will embrace the feeling of love that we desire.
But for now the feeling remains a confusion to most of us. We simply state that love is love, and continue with our lives, and our mess of emotions.
