An Ever-Shifting Understanding of Love
a letter to my beloved, who has the only personalized version of this poem
Love takes the form of many things, my darling. To some love is a heated blanket on a frightfully cold winters night. To some, it is a mug of tea and a quilted blanket after the night of an accident on a frozen road, with a bandage on your head from when you hit it on the steering wheel. Sometimes it is a hand holding yours during a difficult moment of conversation, meant to comfort and ground you when you feel you may be lost at sea.
Sometimes love is a hand upon your shoulder, which is meant to comfort. But sometimes a hand upon your shoulder is not a gesture of love. It is a method of control, a way to force someone’s will upon another. Sometimes love is a set of arms wrapped around you from behind, meant to comfort you after a difficult day. But sometimes arms around your shoulders intend to throw you to the ground, and take control over your body brutally. sometimes these arms squeeze those within them meaning to comfort and create joyful connection, but without realizing it we separate the ribs and destroy the backs that hold up the smiles of those we love. Sometimes love is singing somebody to sleep, to melodize a common theme, hymn or song to help the one you cherish most relax so they may sleep. But sometimes songs that are intended to comfort are sung in ways that are haunting and cruel by those with only the wickedest intentions. A song of the one I love most haunts my ears now, a memory of intimidation and suffocation rather than a remembrance of one who loves me dearly.
Sometimes love is a blanket, that is laid upon your shoulders meant to warm and comfort you. But sometimes, without intending to, we lay sheets of concrete upon the shoulders of the one we love. Intending to comfort and provide shelter we build houses of marvelous marble and wrought iron, so that they may withstand the storms of life and the cruelty of an invader. But without realizing what we have done, we sometimes create prisons of cold inescapable stone and metal, that terrify, imprison, and torture the one we only mean to protect and comfort. Sometimes love is a warm mug in your hand, filled with a liquid meant to soothe and comfort you after a difficult day. But sometimes, all we have ever been handed mugs full of is poison. When some have learned to give love in mugs, others have only intended to fill the stomachs of their victims with misery and sorrow.
Love is a confusing and fluid thing. What has been love to one individual may have only ever been a method of torture to another. What may be only grasped to hand off as love in one person’s hand may be seen as a cruel tool of torture by another. What some see as love has only ever been an experience of torture to another. What some see as terrifying, others see as a sanctuary of peace. When some offer space and the freedom of solitude as a manner of understanding and care, others only see abandonment. When some only intend to offer space others see a cruel isolation that was forced upon them in ages past.
To those of us who have been forced to lick love off of a scalpel’s wicked edge, the giving of a blade feels like a gift of love and devotion. But we forget the blood we shed learning to lick love off of blades, and without realizing it we lacerate the hearts of the ones we love, without even realizing we have separated flesh from bone. We have eviscerated the hearts of our beloved without realizing we have even pricked the skin and drawn blood.
Love is complicated. Love Is only capable of being perceived through 5 keyholes and the sensations of our flesh. Our understanding of love is based in how love has been given to us or how it has been withheld from us in the past. Love is patient, but our capability to perceive love may not be which can be damning. Love is kind, but what is kind to some may be only experienced as cruelty by another, which is an unintentionally destructive experience.
My darling, Love can be confusing. Love can be difficult to understand, because each and every person has a plethora of differing experiences. Even what may be loving at one day can easily be weaponized by one with cruel intentions, and stain our perceptions of love forever. This is a knowledge that has been burned into my bones and etched into my brains. But I have plenty of space left to learn more about what love means, to slowly teach myself what it means to cherish each and every person I should choose to love, but one day I hope to have softly written in my heart the instructions to your love. For each and every letter to be softly engraved upon my eager waiting heart by your gentle and loving hand. I only wish to delicately learn to love you, even though I will have to continue to learn what that may mean for the rest of a lifetime. I do not mind, I honestly yearn to become a student of your heart, a researcher of the almost silent but pulsing and alive yearning of your soul. My heart waits eagerly, the pen is poised on the tables of my heart.
I’ve finally come to understand that you are seeking serenity rather than punishing me with silence for a crime that I do not understand that I've committed. Now that I understand one of the last hidden reasons for your desperation for solitude, and I understand that to you solitude is comfort and peace rather than forced isolations and a weapon of humiliation and shame. All that is left is for you to grab my hand and lead me in that way, but only when you decide that the time is right again. When the sun shines upon us yet again, may we journey through the pouring rains that life will force upon us with patience and the desire to understand each other’s heart. May the love that we dearly desired together be built anew upon a respecting of each other’s needs and understanding of the differences that a cruel life has brought upon us. When the time is right, I hope we can walk side by side alongside each other, even if we can’t walk hand in hand all the time, I just wish we could walk side by side with each other. I’ll freely give you the space you need whenever you need it, and I won’t call out to you when you are simply out of sight. I’ll learn to simply wait until you’re ready to walk side by side again, and then continue having allowed you to regain your peace and comfort. And together may we walk, in peace, comfort, gentleness, and understanding of the other.
~WanderingSentiments
