Love

What is love?

Is it the fast beating heart that causes your face to flush and your hands to flitter?

Is it the undeniable need to help all those unwilling and incapable of helping themselves?

Is it the way your eyes widen as your heart skips a beat causing your breath to be sucked in?

“Huh!”

Now slowly out again

“Huh!”

Now slowly out again

Look at me in the eyes

Hold your shaking hands in mine

Mine are more steady than yours because I have yet to feel those emotions that illicit the response so common to those young ones fleeting in the lost sea of love

Because though my hands are steady and yours are not what does that mean for our hands once intertwined?

Will they both shake?

Or will they both hold steady?

I guess it depends

Why are your hands shaking?

Are you afraid?

Are you afraid that after all this time you have only reached a position of almost although you offered the world your heart?

A position where your almost is simply an averaged approximate?

What if your almost is simply someone else’s all?

That’s the thing about love…

It’s different for each person

Changing, Creating, Creasing the ever changing folds of our heart

What about the people who don’t feel love so strongly?

Does love have to be found in a lover?

What about inside yourself?

What about a friend?

Isn’t that enough?

Maybe

Maybe not

I guess it depends on your definition of love

When it creeps and crawls and catches your every breath, is that love?

What about the kind of love you feel when you help a fallen person get back up?

What about the kind of love you feel when you bestow a beautiful gift upon a beloved?

What about when your heart clenches and your mouth stretches into a simple smile just because your best friend is back?

I don’t know

Anything could be love

But what about those who are stuck in a constant loop of loving love

If you love love where does that leave you?

Searching, scrambling, slithering back to the few that will slide you a “I’m Sorry, I’ve changed card” under the door that you stormed out of last time?

Holding your shaking hands and promising they won’t ever leave you again

But how do you know?

You don’t

That’s the thing about love

It’s kind of like a free fall

You are going so fast that everything around you turns into a frenzy

And then

Bam!

You hit the ground

It’s over

It’s done

Well maybe…

What about the ones,

Searching, scrambling, slithering back to the few that will slide you a “I’m Sorry, I’ve changed card” under the door that you stormed out of last time?

They’re still there

Searching, trying to make another promise

Loving the idea of love, but not truly loving the idea of commitment

Responses come and go

Causing your heart to be bundled up and thrown around, crashing to the ground only to hit the bottom

Rock bottom

What’s at rock bottom

A bunch of rocks?

A bunch of love lovers?

A bunch of “I’ve changed cards?

Maybe, I don’t know

I wouldn’t know

I’ve never hit rock bottom

But I’ve also never flown

Never free falled

Never hit the ground

Never felt that punching, pushing, pulverizing feeling of falling out of love

Or falling in for that matter

But maybe I have

Because I’ve lost love ones

And my heart still yearns for them

So maybe I have hit rock bottom

I’ve flown, free falled, flipped restlessly until

Beep – just one moment and then…

Gone

Rock Bottom

So I think I’ve been there

Yeah, I’ve been there

There’s this kind of salty feel down there

Yeah, salty

Why salty?

It’s salty because of all the thousands of terrible tears that cover rock bottom

Our tears are salty right?

I wouldn’t know

I don’t drink tears

It’s salty on rock bottom

But who doesn’t like a little salt

Salt makes everything better right?

One thing I found out about rock bottom is that it’s really not the bottom

When you hit the ground and lay there feeling totally, utterly defeated you realize

When I put my hands on the ground to push myself back up my fingernails are filled with dirt

You know what that means?

That means that I am not TOTALLY on rock bottom

I’m close

Like really close

Like so close that I wouldn’t need a centimeter to reach it

But I’m not all the way there yet

There’s still a little ground to cover

And this time I will leave it untouched

You know why there’s ground uncovered?

Because there’s still that little bit of love

That little bit of love that will never leave you

That little bit of love that causes your heart to beat faster, your face to flush and your hands to flitter

That little bit of love that causes your heart to skip a beat and your eyes to finally widen just enough to see that all the rocks around you aren’t actually ugly grey rocks

The rocks are glittering gemstones

Formed by the tears of love and loss

So maybe all this fear, anger, hurt, sadness, is all what makes you so special

You’ve grown from these experiences

These experiences are what’s going to allow you to climb right back out of that hole

And when you climb out

You are gonna face the world and say, “Hey world, guess what!”

The only answer you will get is an echo of your question, but you know others are listening because the air stills and the trees stop rustling

You’re gonna say “Remember when I asked what is love?

Well I found out,

I found out that love isn’t a what, a thing, a simple object to be passed around

Love is that moment,

That one true moment that you realize that even when the only thing around you is a bunch of rocks,

You are still loved

You don’t need others to say I love you,

You don’t need others to hold your shaking hands

Because the greatest love of all is the love found inside you.

That love that is bubbling, bouncing and building those little gemstones

Those gemstones that make you, you

They sparkle in the shining sun and remind you that you are enough

So this time

When all you see is ugly grey rocks

When all you hear are insults rustling in the wind

When all you feel is the weight of the world pressing down on you

Just remember that inside of you

You hold the key to happiness

To your happiness

And that key is made up of those glorious, glittering gemstones

Formed by yours truly