Love

As a writer, I feel like part of my job is to record experiences.  It's not always easy to do, to admit things and share them with the world.  But being a writer means I have an ability to record, and just as a doctor has the ability to save a life - I have the ability to record emotions.  Not that I am particularly gifted at this, but I think I can do at least a decent job at the task. So, I'm recording something that's hard for me to talk about for a variety of reasons - most of which are far too personal to share online.  Even this is personal, but it's just a feeling, one many experience, but maybe not to the extent I do.  Who knows.  It's a comparison no one can ever really make.  I'm rambling.

Feeling things has been an up and down battle for me.  I've been through times when I thought my chest literally had a hole in it and I've had times when I felt nothing for months on end.  I've had times of such utter ecstasy and I've had moments of uncontrollable sadness.  The worst was the time when I stopped feeling.  For a few months in my life...I felt nothing.  Pages were blank.  I was bland.  My friends saw me smile - it was all just so no one would ask me how I was...because I didn't feel anything.  Not feeling, being at a 5 constantly is unbearable.  I'll take my highs and lows any day.

That leads me to feeling love.  I'm an intensely loving person.  I don't know yet if it's a gift or a curse - my extreme desire and ability to love.  Most would default to it being completely wonderful...but understand that being able to love incredibly deeply, means you are much more likely to feel pain as well.  When someone attacks a friend, they are attacking me.  They're attacking my heart.  I become a lion if I have to be.  As a friend drifts out of my life, I feel the distance.   I actually notice space between us and it saddens me more than it should.  I feel like a piece of my heart gets cut away every time a friend does - even if that friend was nothing but toxic to me.  It's because I love...despite what that person does to me.  I still love.  I still have love in my heart for them.  There have been a small handful of people who have really left my heart and it was freeing - what I imagine most people experience when they lose a friend.  I don't get that relief often.  When I do, it usually takes years to occur.

More than just friends - I love very deeply and find that I love more than I probably should.  I can build up a moment and live on that feeling for days.  I can feel a sensation on my arm and it washes over every nerve in my body and lingers.  It's because I attach.  I link.  I connect.  I embrace.  It also makes the severing of that love even harder.  I feel like I lose hope, lose a piece of who I am every time romantic love slips through my fingers.  Every time I get an inch closer, I feel like I've just gone a mile...but when reality sets in...that I only made it an inch...well.  It feels like a weight on your chest - if you can imagine someone loading it slowly with bricks.  A longing for that hope, that moment when you could imagine what the next encounter would be.  You want to be back in that blissfully unaware and hopeful little moment.  But time marches on and you come to reality.  That's when the bricks start getting laid.  Not being able to have love is when the pressure reaches the most.  It's a hole - a missing part of you.  There's so much love I have to give to someone that it almost makes me explode.  I'm like a thundercloud with lightning ready to strike the earth - but with no place to direct it.  For those of us with so much love in our hearts - the best we can do is hope that one day, we'll be able to direct it somewhere.

Despite the pain and sense of distance loving causes - I can't stop.  I don't want to stop.  I get to experience relationships so deeply, and that's irreplaceable.  I don't want to stop loving this much.  Someday I'll find someone who loves as deeply as I do and hopefully he'll direct that at me.  While I search for that, I still get to love my friends and my family with a fierceness I can't live without.  A dedication I have to breathe in.  It's worth it, I guess - the love even with the pain.  The ups are only as great as the downs.  So if my downs are really deep, I suppose that's why my highs are so incredibly high. It's a rush.  It's a rollercoaster ride...and one that I'm taking in stride.  Even on nights when I want to die the lack of love hurts so much.  It's still worth having because the hope of having more is still there.  Without that love to look forward to...what would hope be?

Live, Laugh and Above All...Love.