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When I think about love...

I think about the people in my life. I think about the good, the bad. The love that comes as easy as breathing, and the love that comes with an indefinable struggle. It’s never been hard for me to love. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever experienced an emotion that came easier for me. Loving those who are built firmly into my heart in unbreakable bonds that define so much of me and my life. Loving those whom have once held me unimaginably close and seemed so real, and right at that time. And loving those who made me feel safe, and made me feel as though I wasn’t, had never been, and never would be alone.

When I think about love...

I often wonder what it would be like. To be me. To be the person I am, and to not hold so many scars inside myself where I have loved and lost. I think of the things, the people, the places that are now behind me. Stuck somewhere inside a past that seems blurred by the unsought gift of self preservation. For the most part, I can count my blessings within each person that I once trusted enough to hold the weight of me and my own heart. I can see the good where there is so incredibly much bad to be accounted for. I can find it within myself to smile and be grateful for everything that was said, that was done, that was felt, and that was endured. For the most part, I am better because of the people I have loved, and the people I have lost.

Because when I think about love...

It makes sense to me to feel so deeply all the places inside where there are gaps and holes. Those empty spaces that were once filled with a blindingly infinate amount of a person. One that I gave myself entirely to. It makes sense to me to look at the future, and the possibilities of another person and feel afraid for what may or may not happen. It makes sense to me to be unavoidably fearful and cautious in the terms and the laws of love. The way that it feels so much easier to fear it then to it does to trust it anymore.

But I believe in it...

I believe in love. Unbounded, unruly, unbelivable love. I do because I always have. Because in some way, and to some degree, I always will. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to have given up and lost faith in life, in people, and in humanity... but to live a life without love is to live a life without possabilities. Without compassion, or connection, or any of those things that make human beings so real, and so special.

I believe in love, and in every single last place that it has taken me, in every single thing that it has shown me, and in every last person that it has brought to me, and then taken from me. Those parts of me, and my life.. They were so real. They still are in so many ways the realest parts of me. They keep me constantly aware of what lives inside of me. Of what it is that drives me, and keeps me going in this life. Of that thing that keeps me alive, and of all the good in me that I have to offer.

Yes... when I think of love

I think of the capacity and capability of my heart. I think of the immeasurable, and incalcuable depths that it holds, despite all the suffering and loss that it has endured. And with it, I can let go. I can learn to live without so much.

Because with it, I already have everything I need.

Everything I have ever needed.

Because with it, it doesn’t matter what I am without. It doesn’t overrule what I have gained. What I have conquered. What I have discovered within myself.

So when I think of love... I think of the joy, the bliss, the experiences of my life. And with that in my heart,

I am whole.