Global marketing and advertising have been steadily feeding us the idea of The Perfect Love which implies finding a soulmate, the jelly to your peanut butter, the toaster to your gluten-free toast, the knight in the shining <Under> Armor with whom you then proceed to your Happily Ever After and disappear into the California sunset. Preferably.
Yet what they always keep behind the curtains is The Real Love. The hard, the messy, the raw, the bitterly beautiful.
Let’s face the uncomfortable truth here: we all are broken in our unique way, to a greater or lesser extent. Nobody survives this wicked, merciless grind called life unscarred.
As someone wise, whom I now cannot remember for the life of me, once said, “We are all of the books we read, all of the stories we heard, all of the movies we watched.”
For the purposes of this post, I’d take the liberty of adding, “and all of the people we once loved and who loved or didn’t love us back.”
By the time we smash into those we fall for in a Grand Kind of Way, we already have our hands full with all sorts of baggage and are covered in third-degree burns from everything we survived to date. And this is where it takes a crapload of compassion and tenderness, resilience and patience to love them with all those scars, unhealed wounds, roughness around the edges, the mess-ups and the fuck-ups. On the good days and the bad. Especially on the bad.
This is what real love is all about.
It has nothing to do with curvy little cupids all over the place on V-Day, Belgian chocolate (although I gotta admit, I love me some good ol’ Belgian chocolate!), 100500+ roses and all that obnoxious BS.
Love is gorgeously unfiltered and preciously raw, and imperfectly beautiful.
So, let’s celebrate it for what it truly is and love our “jellies” and “toasters” even fiercer, including on days when we feel like throwing utensils at them.
Let’s face the uncomfortable truth here: we all are broken in our unique way, to a greater or lesser extent. Nobody survives this wicked, merciless grind called life unscarred.
As someone wise, whom I now cannot remember for the life of me, once said, “We are all of the books we read, all of the stories we heard, all of the movies we watched.”
For the purposes of this post, I’d take the liberty of adding, “and all of the people we once loved and who loved or didn’t love us back.”
By the time we smash into those we fall for in a Grand Kind of Way, we already have our hands full with all sorts of baggage and are covered in third-degree burns from everything we survived to date. And this is where it takes a crapload of compassion and tenderness, resilience and patience to love them with all those scars, unhealed wounds, roughness around the edges, the mess-ups and the fuck-ups. On the good days and the bad. Especially on the bad.
This is what real love is all about.
It has nothing to do with curvy little cupids all over the place on V-Day, Belgian chocolate (although I gotta admit, I love me some good ol’ Belgian chocolate!), 100500+ roses and all that obnoxious BS.
Love is gorgeously unfiltered and preciously raw, and imperfectly beautiful.
So, let’s celebrate it for what it truly is and love our “jellies” and “toasters” even fiercer, including on days when we feel like throwing utensils at them.
