“love”

i helped my bff set up his facebook page tonight (he has finally joined the over-information age) and, in doing so, kinda took a once over of my own. i was a wee surprised to see how often love comes up on my page (though i probably shouldn’t have been). it’s in my quotes, my movies, my music, my pictures. it’s kind of in my everywhere, facebook and otherwise. it’s cuz it’s love and that’s what makes my world go round and round and sometimes even upside down.

google love and it hits “about 1,930,000,000” times. “i’m feeling lucky” leads straight to wikipedia where klimt’s “the kiss” highlights the romantic side of love. capturing the beauty of the emotion, klimt portrays a pair of golden lovers, tangled up in each other, in the throes of a passionate embrace. her longing leaps from the canvas while the absence of his face, buried in the neck of his lover, says more than even his face could. dictionary.com offers 28 definitions of love…

nothing in my life has caused greater pain or greater moments of joy, from my friends, family, and lovers alike. my unwavering belief in love’s role in my life has been the source of the greatest disappointments and the most wondrous surprises and i guess that shouldn’t really be any mystery, all things considered. used as an excuse for grisly murders and a reason for grand acts of generosity since the beginning of time, at the root of new beginnings and terrible endings, and the subject of history’s greatest tales and most celebrated war stories is love.

everyone has something to say about love and, whether it be gentle in nature or the thunderous roar at the heart of a revolution, all seem to agree that, “all [we] need is love”:
• che guevarra said that, “the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love”.
• through the voice of helen, shakeseare told us, “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”.
• demarco said that love was the only answer to questions of value in life.
• plato noted that, “at the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”.
• the scottish playwrite sir james barrie said of love, “if you have it, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have”.
• and even joseph conrad left us with, "woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life".

while the cynics mock love, the romantics revel in it; while the young and lucky know nothing but love, the battered and unlucky sneer when love manifests. though it ain’t always great, love has touched us all and always will. though some of us will never really give love a second chance, some of us will try with all our might to believe in love again. and then there are those of us who will jump back in with reckless abandon, even after strolling about the doldrums of love’s most desperate hours.

i want to be that girl, the one who jumps back in with reckless abandon. but i cannot seem to direct my fear into complete submission. for all the wonderful love is, has been, and can be, it also terrifies the shit out of me. i mean, it’s not really love itself that terrifies. it’s the fear that having faith in love will blow up in my face and i don’t know how i’d fare with another burn.

cuz i’ve been burned like a mother fucker, have blindly believed in the words of a liar i would have laid down my own life to defend, and though the scars may continue to fade, time will never erase them away completely. even though i see love everywhere i look, feel it in every breath i take, in every choice i make, in every friend i have, and in every direction i choose to glimpse at my future, i’m still scared it will destroy me if i’m forced to endure the agony of its failure again. the thing is, i know i want love more than i’m scared of it. i want to believe in it. i have to believe it can and will be better than it’s ever been, even if i am scared. near to death…