foreigner once sang, "i wanna know what love is; i want you to show me." lord, is that song sappy. it's a FABULOUS long road-trip jam, when you're totally alone in the wilds of tennessee with nothing around you but trees and gratuitous power ballads and can totally let your vocals rip.
i mean, not that i'd know this from experience or anything.
but it's creepy how sappy little things here and there can morph into these GRAND, OVERARCHING TRUISMS. i really thought i knew what love was from a very young age. as you've probably noticed, i was a very confident kid, and when i was seventeen, i just knew that this. was. it. there was no going back; i'd met the man i was destined to marry, and we were gonna live happy ever after in our little fairy-tale world, with no worries or cares.
enter adulthood. enter growth (or lack thereof), refinement of goals. a very wise fellow blogger said that "i was a very different woman at 29 than at 23, a woman i liked a whole lot more." heh. turns out. so i'm taking steps to undo the damage that blindness and overconfidence caused, damage that reveals itself to be more serious and scathing than i even realized possible. this process is long, and the rage that takes over every single time he drags his feet and makes this take longer threatens to swamp me completely. it's not going to be easy to overcome this.
but lo and behold, through the forest, there's a small beacon, a single ray of light. as it happens, i'm really, finally starting to see what love is. it's been here all along, beside me through up and down, and the late unpleasantness, to say the least, has brought it forth in the most sweepingly obvious manner possible. when i've been at my lowest, my saddest, my most desperate, all i've gotten is absolute and unconditional love, poured over me when i've needed it most. i don't know what to do but worry, he says. i say back, this breaks my heart - i don't want you to worry. i'm sorry. and then, the three sentences that move me to tears, stir my very soul: don't be. it's not your fault. and you know i only worry because you mean the world to me.
this is what love is. this is the gift i've been given in the undoing of my life. this is the privilege with which i've been bestowed: the true, pure love of an unyielding partner. this is real. this is the cord that binds us. and i am beyond honored to finally, truly know what love is. there just aren't words.
Hello world!
1 month ago
I was actually thinking about this the other day. I was thinking back to my first love, back in high school. A lot of people say that those first feelings aren't really love, that you can't really love someone when you're that young, but I disagree. I think love is a stepwise thing, and it takes many stages, each more complicated and intense than the one before, before you finally fully understand an appreciate it for all it is. And then, the best thing is, that same love keeps getting better and more beautiful as time goes on.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you've found it.
Too funny, just read that post that you quoted above and loved that part too! And I agree with you completely about learning what love really is now. I obviously am in a similar place now, and it's amazing to feel it, and to allow. I'm still learning to embrace it, but no longer question it!
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