Love

Is there such a thing as love? Of course there is! I believe there are many ways to love and be loved.  As a woman I spent many of my first 20 years trying to find love.  Now that I have such a great abundance of it I feel I can truly share with the world what love means to me. I’m sure the world won’t be reading this any time soon.  I am content with the few people I know will take the time. 

As children we look for love from our parents.  It starts in the womb and as we grow we stumble, we fall, we cry for mommy and when mommy kisses it we’re good.  The older we get the more widespread our search for love becomes.  We all want to be loved.  We all want to be understood, accepted, cared for, trusted, and valued.  We want to feel good.  We want to find the light at the end of the tunnel and feel the relief swoop over us like water from a fall.  As teenagers our search gets a little skewed.  We think we know what we’re looking for but most of the time what we’re looking for is staring us right in the ocular membranes, yet we keep ‘searching’. Some of the lucky ones eventually recognize that.  But for the vast majority, we get to be adults and have massive regret.  We chalk it up to lessons learned and we pass that genius on to our children who will undoubtedly make many of the exact same mistakes.  It’s our job to guide them in the right direction.  Being full grown, responsible, knowledgeable, greatly experienced adults we have the right to tell our children whatever we think they need to hear.  It doesn’t always mean we’re right.  But we’ll do whatever we have to, to ensure that they don’t blame us for making the same mistakes we made.  They’ll find the love they’re looking for just in time to realize it isn’t want they really wanted.  As teenagers we think we know everything, anyway.  It should be no surprise to the adults in our lives since they’ve all been there before.  But no matter how many times an adult tries to tell a teen something to ‘help’ guide them, there is only so much useful information the teenage brain can hold.  As a young adult we look back at those teenage years and often have regret, sorrow and a lot of unanswered questions.  This is the time when we try to mend fences and narrow our search.  We have a better idea of the love we’re trying to find, even if we have to make sacrifices and break a few hearts along the way.  As we move along, gaining all this life experience, some of us happen to stumble upon something that we couldn’t have imagined in all our years of searching while some of us spend our entire lives waiting, not really knowing what we’re actually looking for. 

In all my years of searching I never really knew what I was looking for.  I knew I wanted to be happy.  I knew I wanted someone to let me love them the way I wanted to be loved.  What I didn’t know is that all these years the love has always been there.  It’s been everywhere.  I didn’t have to search.  I didn’t have to do anything but open my eyes and my own heart.  I know now that I have more love in my life than I could’ve ever imagined having, even at the ripe old age I may reach before I die.  I’ve always had it.  I’ve had love from my family and friends.  I’ve had the love of music in my heart since I was I diapers dancing around singing ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.  Oh, that just dated me, didn’t it?  I’ve had the love of my favorite foods that to this day I can’t avoid no matter how hard I try.  I’ve had movies and TV shows steal my heart over and over again.  I’ve had a love for certain scents whether it’s from a flower or a passing stranger at the mall.  I’ve had my love of crafts since…birth.  I just love that stuff! I’ve lost some things that I love very dearly but I’ll always love them no matter how near or far.  I have the love for my children and from my children that I’m pretty sure I could survive the rest of my life on.  Every day of my life I have been surrounded by love.  I can only hope that the people I love know that I love them and I always have.  Once someone makes a mark, it’s sort of permanent. I love that.