Touchy subject, love is! A lot of young people, and old people, haven’t quite figured out what love is all about, or what it’s supposed to mean about a relationship between two human beings. I’d like to think that I’ve got it figured out to a certain degree, but I’m probably pretty far off the mark. Nah… that may not be true either, since the meaning of love changes depending on who you talk to and depending on their experiences and the people that they know.
I guess it really comes down to this. Love doesn’t really have a single definition or a secret. It’s something that depends on who you are and who you know. I hope that this makes sense, cuz it’s kinda fuzzy in my head at the moment. Who you are defines how much you want others to give to you, or how much you expect others to love you. I mean, it really plays a big part in what you expect from others in order to feel loved, if that makes sense. And who you know plays a big role too, because if you know people who have the same type of expectations as you do then you’re quite likely to find the love that you have always wanted. Meanwhile, if you know people who have different ideas and expectations on what love means, then you’re likely to feel confused and lost in the grand scheme of things.
Dear God, that doesn’t seem to make much sense does it? Maybe it will. I would hope so. I could sum it up exactly the way that I introduced it; it really depends on who you are and who you know.
I can say for sure that I feel extremely blessed to be who I am right now. I have very close friends that I love very much and feel no qualms in saying that. They might be married or in relationships, but I don’t have to feel any sort of shame or hide my feelings when I say that I love these people. I’ll put their names below:
Chris
Jen
Jay
Darren
Might seem a bit braggart, and you’d probably feel right to feel that way. For me, though, I’ve gone through a large part of my life up to this point not knowing what it felt like to be loved by people outside my family, and it really makes a big difference in my life to have met random people I love and who love me back. I mean, a really big difference.
So, I guess this is the part where I talk about what love means to me? That’s a tough task, actually! Like, I know who the people are that I love, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you why I love them the way that I do or why they earned my love like they did. But what comes to mind, now that I think about it, aren’t parts of their personalities, but rather the things that they were willing and happy to do for me.
Like, ok, let’s take Darren. He was a source of happiness when I was living in a foreign country and was horribly depressed. And I got to visit him once and had awesome cuddly time with him, and we did a lot of things together, just him and me, and had deep dish pizza and watched movies and shared things and it was all kinds of awesome. It’s just so cool that I have someone that I can share things with and they laugh and get it and want more of that.
And then we can take Jen, who drew me a picture when I was sad, and tells me that she misses me, and is happy when I’m around and listens to the things to say. And I never feel impatient at her or upset or anything like that. Which is weird because I don’t see myself as giving most people the privilege of my patience like I do with her. It’s like no one wanted to give her any patience and I see it as my mission to give her just a little bit of understanding and patience and time.
And I could probably wax poetic about all of my friends and go on and on about how I love them for whatever reason I do. But at this point, I’m not sure that I can really bring this to a point that would be all encompassing and revealing, so I’ll draw this to a close. Love, for me, is not tied to marriage or some sort of relationship. Love is recognizing someone who matches me in some sort of way, like a puzzle piece that makes my life more complete. Recognizing that someone is having a positive influence in my life and that my life would be less than what it is if they didn’t exist. And when I finally learned how to recognize that and take my closest friends from that group, I wasn’t depressed any more, and I learned how to be happy again.