Understanding Love (#ModernLoveContest)

Understanding Love

I thought that I understood love.

I thought that when I was six, I understood love. Love was the reason my parents were married, why my grandma spoiled me at Christmas, and those rare moments that my brothers and I agreed.

At eleven, I realized love was more than marriage, gifts, and blood. I realized that love was what tore my parents apart- allowing them to heal with others, who I grew to love as well. Love, to me, was the heartache I felt when I couldn't reach out to my brothers or when I was bullied. And it was what inspired my grandparents to even think of me on holidays. Love was what God created me with. 

At fourteen, love began to mean more than just what it was. To me, what really mattered was what it wasn't. I found that love wasn't guaranteed by blood, and love wasn't family. Love wasn't having my first kiss or holding hands- that didn't change how cold they were alone. Love wasn't my best friend- he didn't want me, he just wanted attention. Love wasn't grandparents or friends by association, and definitely not God. How could he put me through this?

At sixteen, love was pain. Love morphed into what I fantasized over but knew I just would never truly have; what I dreamt of grasping, but couldn't obtain. Love was patient and kind, yet I saw neither patience nor kindness. Love was peace, if achievable. Love meant death to a me I sometimes cry for.

But now, I realize that love is not exclusive. Love is what brought my biological parents together and pushed them apart. Love is what my grandparents felt when they first held me, gave me each present, and even when I drifted away from them due to their harmful theology. Love was every time my brothers and I got into violent fights, and was what turned us into siblings with bonds like no others. Love was there when I tried to stand up for myself again and again, and it was there each time I made a small connection with someone that never quite earned the title "friend". 

Love was patient and kind and peace and life. Love was the strength found through the pain of my familial, spiritual, and psychological traumas. Love was what I shared with someone the first time I had sex, even if it eventually faded. It was there the most recent time, too, and every area in between because I learned to fall in love with myself.

With that, I found love everywhere. Love was my first dog and my current roommate's cat. It's the faint breeze that give me the slightest relief on ninety-degree days. It's the knowing look I share with my mother, it's the plants in my window, the feeling of excitement when an old friends calls me. Love is flexible, therapeutic, thought-provoking. 

I understand it for now. 

Love was every version of me I tried to override.