Love

When I was four, I knew what love was. It was the man of my life playing house, and building me a big deck to watch the stars. It was a man who drove me to daycare with his bike in the back of his truck, because he couldn't afford the additional fuel to get to work and back. It was one person writing their life around my needs. Love was sweet and beautiful, and completely fulfilling.

When I was twelve, I knew what love was. I saw my mother and my father, and their totally dysfunctional divorce, and their history. Love was two monsters. One always giving, giving, giving. Trying to feed the other, quiet the other, please the other. One was always taking, taking, taking. Trying to win. Trying to have it all. Love was ugly, and it hurt, and nobody won.

When I was seventeen, I knew what love was. Love was the stroke of my cheek. The talk of my beauty. The promises. It was the idea of everything... all that was asked was the gift of one thing. Just my body. That's all. Love was hungry, and without feeding, it would die away.

When I was twenty, I knew what love was. It was a little blue plus sign. It was new life. It was the fear of the unknown, and the hope that everything would be better than I feared. Love was a hand on my ever-growing stomach, not promising to have all the answers, or the cures, but still promising to walk each step beside me.

Now I'm thirty-one, and I know what love is. Love is not the one who smiles when you are happy, it is the one that holds you while you cry. Love is not the ability to give when you have it all, it is the ability to keep giving when you are running on empty. Love is not the big picture, it's the glue that holds all the pieces of that picture together when they're trying their hardest to fall apart. Love is liking someone when they're at their worst... wanting to be near them when you should want to punch them... wanting to hold on when everything inside you is screaming to let go. Love is the whisper in your head to just breathe... just keep going... just keep trying. It's the reason to fight when it all seems hopeless. Love is worth it.

sometimes

sometimes i hold a glass in my hand and have a calm conversation with someone, but the whole time i'm thinking about throwing it at the concrete... thinking about how it would sound when it smashed... thinking about the look on their face, the silence that would follow, and then the questions.

sometimes i am laughing and having a great time, and everything comes over me like a landslide, and i'm still laughing but inside i feel like crying, and you'd never notice except that maybe i will lean against the wall a little so i don't fall to the ground.

sometimes i look at someone and i can't talk to them and they wonder why, but inside i'm wishing that i could slam my fist into their face and watch things break... i'm wondering how hard it would be to make them cry, to push them over the edge, to get back what they have stolen.

sometimes i lay in in bed with my eyes closed and think about 'the secret' and self-fulfilling prophecy, and visualization... and i wonder if i could will myself to stop breathing, to finally rest, to be done with worldly pain.

sometimes these things overcome me and i wallow, and i paint my world black...

but sometimes, a little girl climbs up in my lap, and puts her hand on my tummy and says so quietly you can barely hear her "skin", and lets out an even tinier sigh, like i am saving her. sometimes a little boy sits and watches discovery channel with me, and tells me how incredible science is, and lists off all the amazing things that people have done, and wonders at how they decided to draw, to sing, to light the world up. sometimes the big strong man i love, the one who shoulders everything, pulls me tight against him and tells me that i amaze him. ME. amazing him. and then i breathe a little easier, and i find a way to be glad for every breath again.