Claiming My Voice: From the darkness, the light emerges.

In my 20s, I loved a man in the way only the young love: with every ounce of my being and with a wee bit of crazy. I lived for him. I would have died for him or killed for him. And I knew he loved me. We were young and he was a guy and he didn’t say it but I knew it. Once I yelled at him, “Godammit, I know you love me but every once in a while, I would like to hear that you give a shit!” From then on, I would randomly say, “I love you” to him and he would respond with “and I give a shit.” He thought himself very funny like that. Some years later after we’d broken up but remained friends, we were visiting and making love and he said, very genuinely, “I love you” to which I responded, “I know.” He looked deeply in my eyes and even more tenderly said, “no, really … I love you.” Out of my mouth came an idea that has haunted me since, “I know you love me, you just aren’t very good at it.”

To be clear, it doesn’t haunt me because he’s not very good at loving me (although he’s not 😉 ) but I’ve come to realize that I’m not really any different. I love very deeply but I’m not very good at what I might call the follow-through. Let’s dig into what I mean by that…

Wait, before we dig in, I want to be really clear that I know I love deeply and unconditionally because of how I love my son and my animals. I love them with all my heart and they don’t need to do anything to keep me loving them. And they can’t do anything that will stop me loving them. When my Hunny dog was getting older and was grossly incontinent, I loved her still and took care of her. I didn’t love what was happening but when she died I remember thinking, ‘What now? What am I going to do with all this love? I don’t know if I can love anyone as unconditionally as I have loved her. I don’t know if I am capable of cleaning up anyone else’s shit and not bailing. Who am I kidding. I KNOW I cannot love anyone other than Jacob that unconditionally…and that is why I will always be single and why I can’t keep friends.’ Also, let’s be clear, I REALLY hope I never have to clean up Jacob’s shit again. I did it when he was a baby. I did my mom job.

I want to say I don’t do the hard stuff well with others but that is not true. I do the hard stuff particularly well. Are you dying and need me to take you to the doctor? I’m there! Your kid just got into a horrible accident and you need a shoulder? I’m there! But I’m not good at being there for a long time and I’m really not good at being there for the mundane. I don’t want to talk about make-up and look at baby pictures (unless you are crying at the baby pictures because something big is happening). Then I’m there and will cry with you.

I will likely be there when the shit hits the fan. When others are avoiding the situation because all the feelings are too big, I’ll very probably be there…If you let me…If you tell me. I am in my element in the hard times. You will see my love shine brightest when you need me. I don’t know why. Maybe it is the Universe using the darkness in me for good. Maybe.

I know we are all just different flavors of humanity and that none of us are great at being the people we want to be. I’m frankly suspicious of anyone who says they are happy with who they are 100%. But mostly I suspect I’m just not great at the everyday actions of love. I let people down far too often. I do not follow through when I’d like to and the kicker is, sometimes I don’t even care that I didn’t follow through. So I’m regularly left second guessing my capacity for love. What I’ve come to realize is that I don’t think I love any less than anyone else, my love just looks different that what Hallmark or Disney or society has made it seem like love could look like. In fact, some days I think I love deeper than some. It takes deep love to sit in the discomfort. It takes deep love to have the hard conversations.