Love is so cool.
I love everything about it.
I love watching the people I love most fall into it themselves.
I love thinking back on how my younger self thought I was in it then.
I love growing up and recognizing what it honestly looks like…and how real love is always honest... and how it doesn’t need to be romantic…and how there are innumerous ways to show it…and how it means something different to every person...and how my parents had it…and how my dad still expresses it for her.
I love my life so much.
Some days, I really do feel like the luckiest girl in the world. These are the days I love the most. These days aren’t few and far between, but they don’t always last the full twenty-four.
At certain points, all my love seems to be displaced into missing her. It happens at odd times—times when I don’t accept that this can be my life. Times when all I can remember is how much I love her. Times when my heart sinks into a sick stomach recognition that all my love now feels eulogistic—a million sweet moments only serving a tiny chapter to a love story. A love story that shouldn't have ever had to be abandoned. A love that shouldn't have ever had to feel unrequited.
I loved the way she always kept all of my love right there in front of me—in her essence and the way she lived and adored and emanated such a magnificent energy that the whole world felt her existence and now, her absence.
Ever since her captivating presence shrunk down into the crumpled prayer card on the left interior of my wallet, I’ve felt that I’ve lost not only her but parts of myself too. It's difficult to understand love when the perfect example no longer exists. And while I can find contentment in writing, and talking, and praying, and dreaming, and thinking about her, maybe too much of me is dedicated to rediscovering the way my heart knew how to love because of her. The problem with this is that my heart can't fully hold this same love when I can no longer hold her near and dear, as I once could.
It'd be easy to say love always leads to heartbreak, although that was never her intention. So I'll allow myself to be confused by love and force that confusion to struggle harder, to love harder...finding her heart in more of mine and accepting that this heartbreak is a blessing rather than a fatal wound.
Heavy emotions creep into our hearts and our brains, telling both to make nonsense of the other. Then we're left with a sort of confused love. In this confusion, I do wonder if her death accidentally stripped my heart of all the space it should be capable of saving for everything and everyone who still deserve it.
But love has no limit. It's just that during all these past months of confused love, my heart hurt so badly that it accidentally convinced my disoriented brain that there may not be any sane way to adore anything more. But once my heart stops swelling my brain's ability to make sense of this nonsense, I can finally recognize that while we’re alive, there is quite literally no curb to how many people, how many slow songs, all the safe airplane landings home, glasses of sparkling rosé, old couples acting childish in restaurants, dog-tagged books in the library, nights ending in pillow talk with friends, warm dessert cappuccinos, Uber drivers speaking sweetly about their children, hearing the word "love" between strangers, huge comfy sweatshirts, fancy perfume aromas, fireworks blasting randomly, first smells of snow, summer bonfires, and really, really sparkly jewelry that I get to love. I still get to love it all, all the time. It's hard to love everything without her, but love is all she ever wanted to give me.
Love can be infinite in tiny beautiful moments.
I try to remember that love cannot die with a person. All the energy put into a lost love cannot be destroyed. And while it can be difficult to find room and reason to love again, it is uncomfortably comforting to love so incredibly hard. To love until you get to miss every single one of those lovely days. And then to realize that it's okay to love again while also loving what or who was lost. And to understand there will always be more loveliness.
On the days that I wrongly begin to believe all of my love is now waiting for me in heaven, she makes sure to pull it right back down to me: admiration in my eyes, adoration for my life, love constantly exuding from the heart that'll never forget her place in it.
What keeps you up at night?
Loving can be so easy, and that's when it becomes most difficult.
(P.S. if you feel so inclined to donate to my Relay for Life team, Hug Your Mama, that would be so lovely. (http://main.acsevents.org/goto/HugYourMama).
Comments