I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know much about love. I can see it. Feel it. Taste it. But understand it? That’s above my pay grade. Love has brought me to the edge of sanity. It has also delivered me from the gates of hell. Yet, I still don’t know anything about it. Why does it exist? Why do I have the capacity to feel so deeply and act so irrationally?
Growing up, I loved Disney movies - Aladdin, Hercules, The Lion King - you name it, I’ve probably seen it over a dozen times. And what do all of these movies have in common? Love. That squishy, icky thing! Like so many children of the 90’s, my path was set out for me; I was a prince set on finding my damsel in distress, an ugly frog waiting for his beautiful princess. I daydreamed about love before I even had the capacity to experience it. Ironically, this led me down some of the darkest roads of my life. What’s that saying about the wolf in sheep’s clothes?
The problem was, I was too shy. Unbearably shy. The shaky-hands, sweaty-palms kind of shy. The think-so-much-about-what-to-say-so-I-can’t-say-anything kind of shy. I remember wanting love so desperately but having no way of expressing that desire to the outside world. It felt like a prison - built, operated and inhabited by me and me alone. As I watched my peers start to experience what I so desperately wanted, the resentment and self-loathing bubbled up inside me. Then I tasted alcohol for the first time, and finally - FINALLY - I didn’t feel shy anymore. I didn’t get shaky when I looked at a pretty girl. I didn’t hate my self as much as usual. This was going to be my ticket to the big leagues, my ticket to the love train everybody else was already riding. That’s not how it turned out.
The thing is, it worked for a little. I talked to the pretty girl. I kissed the pretty girl. Eventually, I even had s-e-x with the pretty girl. I couldn’t believe it. I was living the life of my wildest dreams. Then I fell in love (or what I thought it was at the time), and my life was complete, end of story, fairy-tale-Disney-ending achieved. The only problem was the part I never actually thought about - I was nineteen years old. What was supposed to happen next?
Unsurprisingly, my first “love” burst into a fiery ball of flames. I told myself that it was a fluke, that my true love was coming any day now. Throughout my twenties I got into several relationships believing it was love, but it wasn’t enough. I drank more, had more sex, professed more love - still not enough. The truth was, I was not enough. No woman had the power to change what I saw when I looked in the mirror, though a few certainly tried. And without fail, I broke their hearts.
What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t looking for love. I was looking for wholeness. I was looking for someone to kiss me and tell me it was okay for me to be alive because often times, I didn’t think it was. I wasn’t looking for love - I was looking for an answer to all of my problems, and orgasm and validation are a sure-fire way to toss those problems straight under the rug. It’s exactly like drugs and alcohol. I was looking for comfort, and this incessant search for more of it eventually led me to realize I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to change before I could even begin to understand anything about love; sobriety was the first step in that direction.
My first year of sobriety I spent completely alone (save one very forgettable night). It was the best year of my life. I read all kinds of books about life and love and the cosmos, and I was sure I had finally figured it all out. I started to get back into relationships and “Voila!”… nothing changed. I still knew nothing about love. None of the books I read taught me anything about the reality before me. I still felt insecure, still got lost in my emotions, still hurt people, and still experienced an almost unbearable amount of pain.
See that’s the thing about love - its closest relative is pain. Think about all of the insane things we do “in the name of love”. We cheat, we lie, we steal, we kill. We cling to relationships that destroy us all because of a warm, fuzzy feeling we get when we say someone’s name. That’s insane (I’m not in any place to judge here - I’m one of the worst offenders). But my experience with that pain has taught me more about love than any book or relationship expert. I can say with conviction what love is not, and it is certainly not the Disney stories I once envisioned as a child.
The only thing I do know is that love is unconditional. Sometimes you have to let go. Sometimes you have to risk everything and fight so hard it threatens everything you thought you knew. But it always remains, no matter the outcome. No matter what the ego thinks. No matter what anyone else says or does. It’s completely selfless, and it’s hard. Really, really hard. But it’s also the most beautiful thing we’ve got.