Sin & Savior

CHAPTER 3, PART 2

The lights of Maria's office seemed to superheat Scarlett's cells as she expanded upon her life, exploring every situation she could. She spoke of her father's early and unexpected disappearance and her mother's strict, authoritarian style of parenting, which was devoid of nurturing maternal love but filled to the brim with the type of sacrifice children can't comprehend until they are old enough, and broken enough, for the damage to be irreversible. She also mentioned the tedious strings of named family members branching up her familial tree who died early due to mysterious illnesses or entirely disappeared from her and her mother's lives.

"I never once felt 'love' or felt loved. I know of its existence from storybooks, but not directly from personal experience," she professed, sadly and forlorn. "I question whether or not it exists often," she quipped quietly, with a longing in her eyes that betrayed her words. "I believe it does, as much as I believe myself unworthy of ever knowing, feeling, or experiencing it. I know what feeling protected and safe is like... but..."

"Stop that," Maria said sharply. "For starters, your mentor, Dr. Manley, has a fascinating research thesis on the nature of love that includes three important critical examinations I, personally, am inclined to agree with. First, love is often properly used and utilized as an adjective, both functionally and scientifically, far more frequently than it's properly used as a noun or a verb within the context of conditional relationships. Second, the definitions of the noun and verb forms of love have historically ignored self-contained definitions that are often pushed aside so that descriptive adjectives attempting to explain what love 'is' or is 'supposed' to be may be pushed to the forefront by humans with cognitive biases and the proclivity towards erroneous logic, rationale, and emotionally charged frameworks of thinking. This is done to define something that carries a scientifically empirical basis biochemically and can be defined in one way that affects all humans across or throughout history. Third, an incredible amount of the ways we process 'love' don't simply trace back to our early childhood psychological development but to evolutionary biology passed down for hundreds of thousands of years' worth of emotional memory, hereditarily transported through the genetically predisposed components of the human brain, like emotional processing or sensitivity to emotional stimuli altering and influencing the ways in which individuals form and recall emotional memories shaped by their own personal experience and interactions with their environments as living, breathing members of the ecosystem and possessors of interpersonal agency. In essence, we've been conditioned to believe, rather than passionate, disciplined devotion, that the receiving of love is meant to be expressed when one feels emotionally passionate, and its giving retracted the moment one no longer feels the same levels of emotional passion. This concept directly contradicts the true nature of what love is: an equalizer, with the highest achievable aim being to bring things to levels of functional balance."

"That... that sounds..." Scarlett said, before clearing her throat. "That sounds a lot like him, alright. Do you mind clarifying a bit further? I know we've already been speaking an hour, and I would hate to monopolize your time," she said, hesitant to push Dr. Nash any further upon their first meeting.

"Don't worry, that's no problem," Maria chuckled. "Every hour spent is an hour billed. I'll try and simplify his ideas as best I can. Manley's theory posits three arguments," she said, holding up her fingers. "First, 'love' is primarily accurately defined when it's being used in the context of describing the way someone feels about a person, place, or object of their affections, rather than being accurately defined by the way it functions. Second, love, as a verb, is self-sacrificial at heart, and as a noun, is an emotional equalizer that often functions as an amplifier for those who are not self-aware, conflating and tossing aside love's function and purpose in order to elevate love's emotional impact as it refers to boosting one's level of feeling towards a person, place, or thing—or just as equally bolstering their negative feelings toward it. Third, despite numerous multi-faceted cultural, social, and personal interpretations of what 'love' is, what it most certainly is not, is an emotion itself, but a biological imperative that predates written language. It impacts and affects our natural emotion in an incredible number of ways, but isn't an emotion itself, and thus takes the credit for a wide range of scientifically identifiable human emotion, collateralizing and diminishing the value of emotion itself in its inaccurate defining sociologically."

"For example, your mother makes your favorite meal for dinner, and you're ecstatic—succumbed to an overwhelming feeling of love towards her. Or, your mother makes your least favorite meal and you feel an overwhelming feeling of disappointment towards it, or her. Love is the equalizer determining and deciding whether or not your positive or negative emotion is boosted in that moment, as well as precisely how much, and its prime operating range in order to live a balanced and healthy life is equanimity. Love best serves an emotionally-balanced mind and heart—containing not too much positive emotion, nor too much negative emotion, allowing room for the many sufferings and vicissitudes of life, as well as life's many beauties and blessings, along with the ability to moderate how high or low one's emotions carry them when good things or bad things happen. This also works well, both functionally and conceptually, because love at its highest expression is an emotionally positive but functionally servile experience. Have you ever read 'The Giving Tree,' by any chance?" she asked, unexpectedly of Scarlett.

"Yes, I have. It was one of my favorite books when I was a child," she uttered.

"Excellent," said Maria. "That book explores a profound narrative about selflessness, self-sacrificial giving, and the emotional labor associated with such self-negligent generosity. It is one of the best examples of the post-modern 'toxic relationship' there is. Love, at its highest expression, is the tree giving to another as equally selfless and possessing a high degree of interest in reciprocity. Humans, by nature of our very being, are self-centered, survivalist creatures. The real, true nature of love is dedication, is labor, and passionate but balanced, emotional experience shared between human beings in a relationship. Why is any of this important to you, you're probably thinking? Well, when you self-deprecate by expressing that you've known protection but not affection, you ignore a critical form of the expression of what love is. Your mother might not have loved you in the way that you would have hoped she would, but her love for you was evident in other ways that shouldn't go so understated. Even negative passion is indicative of love. Because it isn't an emotion, it's the volume button when things go right, it's the downward crank when they don't, it's the rudder that keeps you sailing steady when your sister is arguing with you at the top of her lungs last night, and you say to yourself, 'That's your sister. It's your sister. She's your sister.' Thanks, Elizabeth," she whispered mid-sentence, chuckling as she let the words release off of her tongue. "We will not promote here in these sessions that you were unloved, but that you survived this long. Only that you have felt unloved, and that we need to unpack how and why that occurred as best as we possibly can, then give you the tools to develop skills that will allow you to love yourself back to life enough to heal what has been harmed, to shore up the voids within your heart that have been opened, and to keep you balanced so that you can become the best version of yourself, for yourself, and other people."

"I... wow..." Scarlett whispered, speechless. "I don't know what to say."

"I do," said Maria. "...Let's get started."