Concepts of Love: A Chronology
1988-1994
The only concept I had of love was of that what I received from my parents. It came to me without me having to do anything.
1996
Kate Rainer wore frilly white socks with polished black shoes. She was in my class. Her blonde hair was always slicked back into a perfect ponytail and golden ringlets draped her neck, bouncing perfectly with each step she’d take. I could never really speak around her, but I sat by her every chance I got. We played catch and kiss in the playground. There were too many girls or the girls team so I volunteered to be on the boys team. I kissed her on the tyre-swing bridge in the lower grade playground of Nerang Primary School. I wrote her a poem. I had planned to read it and then ask her to marry me. Before my courage outweighed my fear, she stopped coming to school. I never saw her again. As much as I could feel it at age 8, it was my first experience of how love comes, and how love goes.
1997
I realised that after we live, we die. No one could tell me what happens when we die. Except my religious education teacher. She told me if I didn’t sin, or at least apologised for them I would go to heaven to be with God. I asked how long for and she forever. I didn’t like this. I remember thinking constantly that there was no point to anything, because we just die and then have to hang out with God for immortal eternity. Love became as pointless as anything.
1998
I wrote Robbie Edmonds a letter asking him out. I thought that since he would likely be school captain, as would I, that now was the time for us to come together and reign. He gave the letter to Tim White on the football field. Tim read it to all the boys. They stood in a circle. Robbie walked over to me and as the boys watched on told me in no uncertain terms that he would never go out with me because I had ugly teeth and wasn’t a real girl. Love as a concept began to form around the idea that I had to be what someone wanted in order to deserve it. My ugly teeth and tomboy ways had made me unworthy of Robbie Edmonds. I stopped smiling in photos. My parents divorced. Love seemed to have a way of making someone reject someone else in the coldest way, inevitably.
2000
All the boys loved Briana because she was the first girl to get her boobs. A kid called Lee announced in the first half an hour of high school that he would finger her by the end of the week. The shorter the skirt, the more the boys loved you. I wore shorts. I still had acquired a boyfriend name Ashleigh. I would talk to him on MSN and every other day break up with him, then get back together with him again the next day. It was my first taste of love as a method of power and control.
2001
Jessie was my best mate. We’d fuck with everyone and spend Tourism lessons learning the cha-cha from a textbook and hum the Becker theme song every time Ms Bekker (our teacher) spoke with us. It was my first experience of loving someone irrelevant of family or romance. She was my best mate and has been ever since. I’ve never had to explain myself to her once.
2002-2005
Love was everything. Everyone had a boyfriend and I yearned to be everyone. I finally landed the new boy at school. The day he arrived I took him under my wing thinking to myself that this was my chance. I got drunk for the first time ever at his sister’s wedding and he proposed to me. I said yes. I had our whole life planned out. Love was real, and it did work out only once we meet our prince charming.
2006
Jacob and I broke up. The world could have very well have ended, if my reaction to the ‘loss’ was anything to go by. I was certain I’d never recover. Love was irreversible devastation.
2008
I feel in love with someone. Deeply. Intensely. No matter how perfectly I could frame myself, no matter how easily I could exist as the person she saw as perfect, the love was not reciprocated in the way I demanded. I demanded a love like mine. I did not accept the love I was given outside of that. I never saw it until after we had ruined it all. Well, I had ruined it all. I had decided how someone should love me based on what I believed love was. All I was doing was rejecting the only way she knew how to love me. Love was a dictatorship. Dictators tend to lose their kingdoms, one way or another.
2010
Love was everything. I had to be working all the time to be what the object of my affection wanted me to be. Love was work. Love was commitment. Love meant I was willing to die for someone. Love overcame everything like a shining knight in armour, to free us from the miserable sadness in this world. I loved everyone and hated myself for I was presenting a silhouette of myself - shaded by the things I thought people wanted to see.
2011
I realised people could control me if I loved them. Therefore, I feared love. Love had played my rational self against my self-esteem. I thought if I were to lose the love I’d found, I’d never have another chance.
2012
I met some people when I was too exhausted to be anyone but myself. I had strength in my friends and family when I had none in myself. Love was no longer a toxic consumer of energy. It came from everywhere and I didn’t ask for it. I misused my returning taste for love and I lusted after someone. This time I had got it right. No doubt about it. I believe this with such reverence. In the face of rejection, I promised myself I would wait. True love meant valuing someone else’s happiness over your own. Love meant enduring someone.
2013
I began to think our work and our love would be the only things that would outlast us, beyond death and in terms of legacy. Life was so precious, how could we deny anyone love? We are all suffering. We must be compassionate. It was the first time in my life I recall exercising the idea of ‘loving myself’. It didn’t come to me in the form of writing down three things I like about myself. It happened by accident, when I started living for myself and valuing my own opinion of myself over everyone elses. I know myself best. I know all my secrets. I should be able to look into my own heart and live for myself. Love was alive in me. I felt it for myself and I felt it for people regardless of reciprocation.
2014
I began to approach the world with an open heart, knowing full well it could be ripped out or abused at any given time. I have survived this so many times, of course I could again. I would no longer deny myself love or anyone I could give my love to for the simple fact it might not last forever. I learned that I would have to learn how to forgive people. If i didn’t start that, I might not have many people left around me. Pettiness has all but disappeared from my life as a result. It has called once or twice, early on Berlin mornings. I’ve just stopped answering. Love has stopped becoming something I am looking for or waiting for. Love has become the cornerstone of my attitudes. Love is not happiness. Love is not peace. From friendship, to work and to romance and beyond - love is an attitude, an approach. I find it far less stressful than hate. Peace and happiness? Well, that's on me.
To be continued.














