Friday, Dec. 21, 2001

love

First things first…….
TODAYS THE BIG DAY!!!!!!!
I’M SMILING WITH YOU!!


I'm so very proud of you, but then again I always was...

Love...

Yeah I’m going to talk about love today, so to borrow a phrase I have read a few times in the last year read carefully. Yeah a subject that millions of people write about daily. A subject that has made Hallmark rich over the years. A subject that gets talked about everywhere you go. A subject I have sat and wrote a thousand poems about…

Recently I watched a movie called “an affair of love” where the characters met up just for sex. It was rather like a prostitute/john kind of affair only there was no money exchanged. The premise of the movie was supposed to be about how they fell in love. The movie held my interest because it was actually filmed well. And it’s a foreign film so I had to sit there and read the entire plot as it unfolded. You have to be dedicated to do that! But somewhere midway through this movie these two characters felt that they had fallen in love with each other. The ironic part of the movie was that both the male and female characters felt this way. But their relationship was so obviously built upon sex that neither of them knew how to communicate their newfound feelings to each other. So they both came to the ridicules assumption that the other party wanted to end the entire affair. There is not at any point and time a moment in the movie where any real and true communication takes place. It’s quite sad. The movie itself was quite good in the fact that it kept me interested and it made me think about all the things going on in my life at the moment.

I think I walked through a lot of the years with the notion that I loved. Just the notion of it, but the emotions weren’t there. The feelings weren’t there. I just overlooked that in the pursuit of keeping it all glued together. I can remember moments when I sat and stared out windows watching it rain wanting to express myself and instead took on the wild idea that if I just sat and said nothing then it would be ok. If I said something then it would open up a can of worms and I’d be sunk. And besides, when I did try to communicate I always felt unheard and that led me to feel even worse about everything in my life.

I think the lack of communication has greatly led to the destruction of my marriage. It has definitely played a large role in that. I either didn’t express myself when I should have or he couldn’t ever seem to hear me. It really isn’t a matter of who’s fault is it, so much as it is the realization for me that that was what it was all about. When the lines of communication break down I imagine that must be a more difficult thing than what happened for me. Because in that case you would have known and felt what it was like to be one with another person and then lost it, but that was never the case for me. I never quite felt like one. I always felt like “here I am over here…wanting to be understood”. That’s a horrible way to carry on a relationship.

Just like in the movie where the assumptions led to the demise of the relationship. Well that movie was a messed up relationship because they started out the entire relationship by going to bed. Then they tried to talk. Forget it. Love doesn’t work like that. Love is not about physicality’s. The physical aspect in my mind has to be planted like a seed. Watered and then the sun has to come out before that seed will bloom. But my point is that if they had communicated they would have truly known each other and understood each other. And in light of that, it would have been a real and true relationship. One that would have probably been all things for both characters.

I think I always pigeonholed relationships into one category or another. Wanting to label everything. Wanting to have a nice neat clearly understood place to put it. Life isn’t like that. The people that have meant the most to me were and have always been the people that took the time to get to know me. The people that wanted to hear my thoughts and feelings about things. The people that I just allowed to be who they were always allowed me to be me.

But then why did I marry someone that I couldn’t talk to? Probably because of all the same stupid reasons people get married everyday. Ohhh he’s cute, he’s this..he’s that. And because I thought I knew what love was. I was too young perhaps. I didn’t even know myself yet. But it’s not supposed to be about what someone represents but instead about what someone is. And I truly believe that 2 months is not long enough to truly love a person. You’ve barely got past the hellos of it all.

I’m rambling on and on but I have a point to make. Someone told me years and years ago that I didn’t know what love was. That I didn’t have a clue. And now I know that person was right. I still think I have tons to learn about love. But…I do know that in order to love someone else you have to love yourself first. So cliché’ and I’d never write it in a poem, but it’s the truth.

I think I have a clearer viewpoint on what love is not. It’s not about owning someone. It’s not about destroying them in order to build yourself up. It’s not about lying, cheating, or stealing. It’s not about fucking, kissing, or holding hands.

Love is about communication. Love is about knowing you can go right there into the midst of someone else’s world and still be heard. It’s about being accepted the way you are. It’s about a mutual desire to learn and grow together. It’s about respect and working towards a brighter future together. It’s not about flowers and wine and dinner, though those things are of course nice. It’s about knowing that you have someone in your corner. It’s about knowing that if you fall down love will come to your side with a helping hand up. It’s about faith and belief. It’s about someone being your best friend. Its about two people who care so much for each other that it’s impossible for them to stop speaking because when that silence comes, so does concern.

I know that a house built with wishes and promises will surely fall down. A house built with a solid foundation and blueprints will stand the test of time.

Perhaps knowing what makes love not work has taught me in part what then must make it work. I know that right now there’s someone in my life that I would trust in and believe in regardless of what anyone else said. I know that when someone is a person of their word and can be believed and trusted ….belief and trust are like water and sunshine to that seed called love.

I know that I have changed along the way. I used to want to believe in the idea that love is like a dream. You close your eyes and open them and there love is. I no longer believe in that. Yes some things are up to that unknown thing in life, it’s either there or it’s not there. But loving someone doesn’t always mean you are “in” love. I mean I’ve had teachers that I loved, I’ve had neighbors that I loved. But I wasn’t in love with them. I believe with everything that I am that the best love in this world is grown over time. It’s tended to, and cared for and with a little whisper of luck, it becomes what it is meant to be. They always say that love isn’t something you can go look for. Perhaps not. But it won’t walk through your door and make itself perfect for you. You have to see it and cherish it and make it beautiful.

Love is someone believing in you when you can’t. It’s going out of ones way just to gain a smile on someone else’s face. It’s about never losing patience when things don’t go your way. It’s about knowing you’d never ask anyone to give up their dreams and wishes and wants in life, even if it meant that if they did you’d get what you wanted.

For all my talk about love, I have only one concrete thing that I can say about it. I have been walking around for a week with a huge grin on my face. Not because Santa Claus came. Not because I won a car. Not because I even got a raise or am going to Bermuda. But instead because he’s graduating and he’s happy and things are going well for him and I’m so beyond myself happy for him. I feel like doing cartwheels and telling the world “heyyyyyyyy he’s happy!” Just to hear him happy makes me so happy. No, I’m not “in” love. To be “in” love you have to have so much more. But I believe that love is finding that one person in this world that you could sit for hours and talk to about anything. That one person you could be so aggravated with and then in the end still want nothing less than pure happiness for them. Someone that pushes you to the edge of sanity in one moment and in the next helps you up from the ground. Love is what’s left after the storm. Love is someone saying goodbye and you know that they’ll never truly ever be gone from your heart.

I don’t believe that love eats if you find the right person. Love can then feed. Love can feed your dreams and help them into reality. Love can feed your thoughts with strength. Love can feed if you find that right person. Love can do amazing things. I think that most relationships that people engage in never have a chance to breath into anything worthwhile because everyone’s in such a big rush. No one seems to see the beauty behind feeling your way around another person’s thoughts, their ideas, their dreams, they’re everything. I think that loves journey should be as amazing as the destination.

Maybe I had to mess things up to realize what its all about. Maybe I had to pay the ultimate prices in life to learn this. Maybe a lot of things…but in the end….

I am glad I know him. I think that love is someone that brings out the best in you. I think that Love is that thing that can’t be touched, but when you want to express yourself it is there to receive. It’s about knowing someone is happy to hear what you have to say. It’s about knowing a person is smiling when you simply go to them to talk.

Love is a girl 686.4 miles away smiling today just because she knows he is.

Smiling….. PoeticaL

No it wasn’t at first sight
But the moment I looked twice…
-Keith Urban


You can't give up on love
That's the one thing we've got to keep going
'Cause it don't come easy and it's so hard to hold
But you can't give up on love
-Alan Jackson

If I were a kite without a string I would still be able to float in the arms of a breeze because you believed in me before I took flight.-PoeticaL

poetical at 7:32 a.m.

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