LOVE MONTH: DAY 16: “Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”― Lemony Snicket
I depended on books and movies to teach me about love when I was young. My family was WAY too crazy to look at in that way. So, I remember thinking that detachment and indifference were the way to be…playing hard to get seemed to be the most popular way of falling in love. A very Ego-tistic method I saw in popular movies.
This is not how to do love. I have since learned that Mr. Snicket’s example is not too far off. Love makes a mess of everything. It is impossible to be cool and detached or indifferent in love. It is about being present to some (for me) scary emotional shit. Even in friendships and families, love is not tidy and neat. It goes all over the map of emotional stuff.
And we change, we get cracked open and vulnerable and squishy and all that stuff. I love/hate it! Ego has a big story about how damaged and hurt and awful it will be for me. Heart just dives in, the messier the better it seems.
This has been the story of my recovery. The more I let life in, the more in love I fall with it. I have been expanded and exploded and changed in radical ways by the most incredible events! And watching a silly video or show on TV can make me cry when I think I am so damned cool! Or tear up when someone is having an emotional response to an event in their life.
We are given these feelings, and they are so messy…at all the wrong times, we blow snot bubbles and look really uncool. I love that! It is one of the most challenging things about life for me. I have had to really work to let myself BE that person. In love with all its joys and sorrows and walking through the uncool-ness of life itself. What a tremendous gift it all is!
And just when I think I am pulling off a detached, cool way of being, I get all blubbery and weepy about a kitten or a puppy…geez! There is no end to how much life has yet to teach me!
