Learning What Love Really Is

“Everyone deserves a little love” – Author Unknown

“Just you and me against the world right Jeremy?” Grace said nestling her head underneath my chin.

“Right,” I said kissing the top of her head and holding her close to me.

I don’t know what I’d do without this girl. She’s my whole world. Without her, things just wouldn’t make any sense you know.

You know when you find that one special person in the world that totally understands you, when no one else can. That’s how it was with Grace. She gets me inside and out. And has been through the same things I have.

 She doesn’t judge me. And I feel like I can just be myself in front of her, instead of trying to be someone else. She likes me for well me. And she doesn’t try to change who I am.

When I first met her, I was a bit stand-offish and tried to avoid her, because I thought she wouldn’t want to talk to somebody like me. But I think it was her sweet and warm smile that made me a bit more comfortable to try to talk to her. Grace was the first person to tell me she loved me. She was the first person to show me what real love looked and felt like.

To be honest, I just didn’t really believe in love. There was just so much hate and grief in my life to even think love existed at all. I wasn’t really born into a family with money, so I didn’t have much friends, sense to them money was what was important. As for my family I didn’t have much. My grandparents died before I was even born. And I was a single child.

My dad was a bum; he drank way too much and was never around. And the same goes for my mom, she wasn’t a bum or anything and only drank occasionally, when she was depressed. The thing was, since my dad was too lazy to get a job, my mom did all the work. She worked 18 hours a day as a nurse and I hardly ever got to see her, maybe sometimes really early in the morning but only if I woke up early enough.

She used to put post-it notes on my bed dresser or on the kitchen table or even on the fridge. Saying stuff like how she’ll miss me and to not forget to feed myself leftovers in the refrigerator and that if I need any help with homework or if I’m in any danger to go over to my neighbors house. So yeah, I think it’s safe to say that I am and have been a very independent person from the start.

I used to think that I was all alone, with no one there for me, to defend me, or to even talk to me. All I wanted was just one person... just one single person…to love me. Is that too much to ask for?

I mean walking to and from school alone, sitting at the lunch tables alone, being at home alone, it gets tiring and depressing after a while. It’s like me asking people to love me was such a hard task for them. I never knew that I was asking so much out of people.

I hated watching other families walk past me with such happiness in their eyes, with all of their kids jumping around, laughing, and just having the time of their lives. I wanted what they had. I don’t know how they made it look so easy. But I can’t even remember the last time I laughed like they did.

I remember on my 10th birthday, my mother died from Leukemia, I never even knew she had it in the first place. I guess she hid it from me because she didn’t want me to worry. The thing is; the pain was three times worse not knowing at the time she died, since it was so sudden. There had been no warning; she was just gone like that, with a single snap of three fingers.

I never celebrated another birthday again, what was there to celebrate? I thought it’d be just too cruel to have my birthday on the same day my mother died.

It was now just me and my father. He was around the house more often now, but instead of paying any attention to me, he had all of his attention on every new woman he had brought to the house to sleep with. I think it was his way to get over the death of my mother. I didn’t like seeing my dad like that, so whenever he brought a woman over, I would go outside in the backyard with a pillow and lay underneath our Oak tree.