I will not love as You taught
me: an excuse for control, abuse
of power, debts to be repaid, where
instead
should be curiosity kissed
with persistence, flexible and fluid,
star-crossed
openness
to a beauteous variable, strength
in this ultimate safety;
now that I know, You
will not keep me from my
Self.
Did you read it as a noun or a verb?
What message have you received about love?
How has love played a role in past traumas and/or in your recovery?
It’s hard to write about love in poetic form without feeling trite; it can be an oddly uninspiring word. Then again, connecting it with the dynamics of the past is a challenge, because in this second-chance life I’m living, I’ve finally learned (OK, I’m still learning) what love can look like, what it should feel like.
In all of its forms, love is freedom within a framework (a bit of corporate jargon I’ll borrow because it’s relevant here). And it’s so very opposite from what I was raised with. When I feel the thing I call love, it comes with a (to me) sacred responsibility towards the object of that emotion: to be curious, open to who they are and what they need. To recognize that their experiences are about them, not me. To allow them to share with me (to share with them) life’s inevitable weights, because martyrdom is the opposite of love. To form a partnership based on whatever thing draws and holds us together, to stand firm and let the other lean, to fall in and trust they’re do the same.
To look inward, and seek things to appreciate, to accept, to forgive.
I wish this for all of us.
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