Love & Be Love(d)
I say that I’ve been lucky in love because of the experience of so many great loves. Big loves. Love a lifetime loves, really. So many ways to love. To be love(d).
I’ve been so very lucky to have felt the love of both of my parents from birth. The love of my siblings, my sisters and a very close cousin who is like a twin brother – only a couple months younger. The love that speaks daily to both of us though we hardly speak in “real life” anymore. That familial co-dependent, character building, it’s not abusive or neglectful it’s just the way we are love.
That first big scary, questionable because it’s not guaranteed outside the familial unit love where you meet your BFF for the first time and want to spend every waking moment with each other until you don’t anymore so you have a fight to get some space and then you make up to get back together. And that’s perfectly okay and normal and expected even and no one holds a grudge and it carries on as before but stronger because that’s what love does. The love where you learn not everyone loves as you do, nor should they.
They become you
simultaneously reminding you
Who you are
Then there’s that first romantic love. First addictive love – Oh! The pain! The triumph! The heartbreak! The loss! All the firsts. . . First puppy love. First kiss. First sex. All the firsts that came before the first REAL love and then the first real love of another.
Every day symbiotic love. Exotic love. The one that got away but you still love and who still loves you though they’re married to someone else and have kids and are really quite happy and you get to say it to each other love. Obsessive love. Jealous love. All you want to do is lay around on the bed together love. Crawl inside each other’s skin love. I love you-I hate you-I love you-I hate you love. Angry violent love. Sad pitiful love. Fun gregarious we’ll conquer the world together love.
Oh the loves. Every time I think oh this is IT, this must truly be the greatest love of my life. The most love I will ever feel for another human being; the most loved I will ever feel outside myself, I get profoundly proven wrong. It gets better every single time and there’s plenty left over. Plenty for everyone – and everything thing.
I think a lot of people must feel like there’s only so much to give so better to guard it like a precious gift. It is that. It’s also a word that can’t be pinned down to one definition because is not a finite concept. Which is appropriate.
It follows logically if a thing is by nature indefinite then there cannot be a finite amount of it to give or share or take. Which means you can’t run out of it, or give too much or even waste it.
You don’t have to reserve it for special people or relatives or only give it to those you respect.
And like light, there are different qualities of love. My love for you (x) is not equal or greater than the love you give me (y). Why? Because it is always only ever exactly equal no matter how you or I feel about it.
There is no right or wrong way to love me so long as I accept that what you are offering me is love. There is no language to describe it, except maybe the songs that most of us stopped singing a long time before we were even born. Oh! So many loves! But of all the ways – experience knows the secret of mastery is to love and be love (d).
May you love and be loved, allways beloved(s). OXXO