Why? Who wants to know? Are you asking about how I loved in the past? That was easy – sacrifice. Ignorance of self. In fact, it may have been more like self-loathing or self-despite, despise, rather than love for the other. What I did I did to keep the peace, not because I necessarily loved. What I did I did because I wished to serve another, not to glorify another. I “loved” God, so I did what God said to do. I did not desire to do what I did – I did not yearn for the kind of lifestyle I lived. I yearned for acceptance, for adoration, from those who I respected, admired, looked up to. I wished for them to tell me “well done, good and faithful servant,” in a proxy voice standing in for the God I worshiped. Did I love the actions I did? Purity. Witness. Study and learn. No. Did I live for them? Yes. But was it love?

I “loved” Jen by giving her the things she wanted. I loved her by accepting her decisions ion items. I loved her by kowtowing when we had a fight. I backed off. “Okay, you’re right,” so as to not have to fight any longer. Peacemaker. Appeaser. But love? No, probably not. I didn’t love in the sense of loving myself first, and only then being able to truly love another. I did not know myself. I did not allow myself to know myself. To understand some of why I have done the things I did.

I did not, because it was easier. It was comfortable. It did not hurt; it did not require me standing up to another and initiating a conversation which needed to happen. It did not result in consequences for me or another. It did not allow both of us to grow and mature. It did not recognize that love is not appeasement. Love is not giving only. Love is not happy-happy-joy-joy!! all the time.

Love is dirty. Love is painful. Love hopes heals. Waits. Love tells the truth. And for that, love is sometimes kicked ot the curb, because the audience cannot handle the reality. Cannot surpass the ideal in the mind, cannot supplant that idyllic image with a less glorious, but more real, more true, more honest version of reality. It is a shame and a terrible one at that. But – when many people talk of love, they talk of “happiness” and “joy” and “freedom”. They do not recognize that with those, in teh bonds of love, in the bonds of devotion, also come terror – and heartbreak – and futility. Those do not negate love. They do not eliminate joy. But they tint the pur-white sky overhead with tiny, wispy black streaks, rendering the image imperfect, impure, but, at the same moment, more real than could ever be imagined.