Don’t Call it Love
Some thoughts, or claims, or ideas:
Sometimes we grow up having what looks like love, or what we decide is love because we need it to be love, or what is the closest to love that person is capable of offering us.
“What looks like love” can be a super-icky mixture of love (or its appearance) and being used to fulfill someone’s needs. It might not have a thing to do with us except we’re there, handy.
“What we decide is love because we need it to be love” is the heartbreaking but dazzlingly inventive way we find the closest substitute for what we really need and do our best to live with it. It might be something quite other than love. It might just be being known, seen. These are not always benign things, not at all, though it’s hard to choose between not being seen or being seen and thereby used or hurt. Not much of a choice at all, really.
“What is the closest thing to love the person is capable of” might not be so very close to love, or may not be untainted by other things that sour it, that make it impossible to stomach. And though we may feel we should be grateful for what is offered, we may be wrong, because it may be poisoned. And that isn’t good enough, not something to be grateful for.
I tell myself these things as much here as I am speaking to anyone else (although that too, if you’re here), because I am just learning them. I do not particularly want to learn these things, to know their truth. But as my friend who’s doing the same kind of process–and inspired these thoughts–said, for her “it’s time.”
For me too. Not that I know how to do this or what I’m doing, except that I need to learn my own truth, and to speak it, without apologizing, without punishing myself for knowing and voicing it.
It’s time for me because it’s time for all of us. There is no time to wait, not when parts of ones self are locked away inside afraid and silenced. These people who claim or claimed to love us do not deserve such sacrifice.
I don’t know exactly what I’m talking about and I’m tempted to delete this whole post or say never mind, silly me, making up things, inventing problems and complaining to get attention. I do need attention sometimes–that part is true for me in the way it is true for every human being–but the rest? I know what that is. That’s the way you keep someone down and silent or at least discredit their voice. Or try to.
It’s too late. For me, once these kinds of processes start they don’t stop. A fearsome force, these kinds of processes. But then, being alive is a fearsome thing in itself. It’s just that it’s feeling a little intense and I’m squeamish and skittish sometimes. Not enough to turn away though, not anymore.
Tags: Change, Fear, healing, love, truth
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