Love in the Gaps
Given that this post is finding its way to the blog on Valentine’s Day, I started this piece with every intention of singing the tune “love is cool and awesome and we should all celebrate it!” I hoped that this would be a heart-warming and gentle reminder of the tenderness and magnificence of love, but every bit of it is messy.
In my senior year of high school, my older brother stood at the altar and promised to forever love his now wife. I was admittedly heartbroken. It was selfish and ugly, but as much I rejoiced for their union, I was also aching and couldn’t understand why. I walked myself through every conversation: betrayal at my perceived abandonment, mourning the loss of my safe space, ultimately wounded because he was branching out to start his own family. I agonized in the months leading up to their wedding. It took me seeing him waiting at the altar for her, and the look on her face as she read her vows, to release some of that fear.
That same tumultuous year I found myself in the throes of my own romance and quickly (and clumsily) came to terms with the fact that my romance novel research over the years had not prepared me quite as well as I thought. Love seemed so easy and charming, but giving my heart to another and letting him see the parts of me that felt dirty and broken immobilized me. He was extending his open hands, and I sifted right through them time and time again. I wanted to be consumed with passion and fire, but I felt overwhelmed. No matter how evidently he loved me and cradled my soft and tender heart, I was clearly stuck. It took me a while to figure out that his hands needed to be met with mine, that I had to be reaching for him every single day, choosing to let him see the pieces of me that I desperately wanted to hide away. He was continuously offering grace but my expectations of love, the ones both met and unfulfilled over the years, kept me from doing the same.
I’ve had the song “I Feel the Love Between Us” (written by one of my favorite songwriters) circling in my brain lately and it paints this beautiful picture of love not as something to exchange but as an ever-present and ever-morphing matter. It sinks into the crevices and saturates the air. With every breath you’re inhaling it, even when the words spoken and received are reminiscent of hard times and tough conversations. I want love to exist in every inch of my relationships, for it to be a state of being. I want to sit in it, and for both me and the person across from me to feel it in every moment, though that’s easier said than done.
One thing is clear: Conditional love is not truly love and I’ve let it gunk up the gears of my relationships far too often. I want to love well, but that requires me to ask myself uncomfortable questions. Am I dismissing love in my relationships with family members, friends or romantic endeavors because it doesn’t look the way I want it to? Am I conditionally loving myself, only allowing space for my own feelings and desires when I feel like I’m succeeding?
Do I love when there is nothing for me to gain?
