When I was really little, just beginning, I didn't know what love was. Then I grew a little, finding my feet, where they were supposed to go, and I still didn't know. And then I grew even more, steps even more assured, and yet, I still didn't know.
And now I'm grown. I'm grown but I still don't know what love is. I don't know what it looks like, where it takes you, what it's supposed to be.
This whole time, I've thought that I would know it when I saw it. But I've seen people in love. Or people that claim to be in love. And I still don't think I've seen love. I don't know what it is, but I know it's not that.
Now that I'm grown, I think its less a matter of not knowing what it is, and more an issue of never seeing it work. I'm grown and I still don't think I've seen healthy love. I don't think I've seen what love looks like, where it takes you, how it works out. But I can now say, now that I'm grown, I know where it starts. How it begins, a gentle bud, too new to be corrupt really. But then it grows, and twists, and frays at the ends where it meets obstacles that stop it from reaching what it needs to be. Poisoning branches so that they drop to the ground in shriveled little twists and it keeps happening until nothing is left but the same basic stem that started growing in the first place.
Some would argue that this is what love is, this strong stem that persists through the obstacles, through the hardships. But really, what is love without those extra little branches? Is it still even love without the pieces that make it special? Or is it just what we clutch on to, a method of self-deceit, the last chance we have to tell ourselves that we are special and that we love and are loved in return. A bare, brittle stem is not love a bare, brittle stem is us, trying so hard to convince ourselves that we still have love that we made it work that it's going to work a bare, brittle stem is an endless circle of self-deception that we are still happy that the fact that we are persevering proves that we are in love, that the strength of our relationship and our love is enough to get us through the obstacles, that our stem will once again bud and branch out and become something truly and spectacularly beautiful, we just have to push through and hold on, because really, we can do it. But there comes a point, when a plant is just too tired to bloom again in the spring, too malnourished and unhealthy to ever grow into anything beautiful again.
I'm grown and all I see are people clutching on to the same fear that they won't make it on their own, a senseless justification for an unhealthy attempt at the concept of love. Maybe love can be achieved. I haven't seen it happen yet. I guess we wait for spring.
