Love

I just read a thing about love
http://erinoutdoors.com/love-is-like-that/

I'm always reading things about love. Listening to songs about love. Watching movies and TV shows about love. Listening to podcasts about love. I write, and draw, and paint about love. I have the word tattooed on my body. It gives me hope, fuels my dreams, makes me smile, and makes me see magic and beauty everywhere.

But it also hurts me.

It makes me question myself and the world. Love makes me ache. It makes me feel empty. There is a place of emptiness inside of me and I'm not being metaphorical, I can feel it when I feel the punch of Love. It's right below my heart and above my stomach. It feels empty and cold, and and it's so familiar. It's always there, but it screams its existence at me when I least expect it. The other night it was in the middle of a Lyft ride, when I was reminded that love isn't coming back to me. I felt the cold hands of mt Love grab that empty place and squeeze it, reminding me to know better next time. My Love demands love, but I can't seem to figure out how to make that happen. Every time I feel it will be different, life proves me wrong and my Love screams at me: not again, what have you done?

I'm sorry, Love. I don't want to be sad either. I try. Every time I feel like, maybe, this time my Love will come back to me joyful, but it doesn't. This isn't insanity. This isn't the same mistake over and over, I'm learning and growing, but my Love has come back bruised every time.

All these battle wounds don't stop me and my Love, we keep going. But how much longer can we go? How much longer before my Love stops me from loving in self-preservation? Before the grip on the empty place becomes permanent in self-love? I used to think those cold hands I felt were loneliness... It took me a while to recognize the grip, to know it was Love itself, trying to hold on to life, to learn, to heal. Love really is like that.