The Language of Love

October 26th, 2018

On a late Thursday night I decided to watch a romantic high school movie. Of course, it was filled will drama, confusion, laughs, and love. Though as I watched, I actually enjoyed it. It was the first time I watched anything related to high school and love and well…didn’t gag or roll my eyes. Instead, I gushed….a lot.

I sat there for the first time missing high school. Missing the drama, the confusion, the laughs and yes…the love. To experience REAL complications in life instead of the made up ones in my head. Drama that actually existed and wasn’t the result of my fabricated thoughts. With this, I can’t help wonder if we weren’t childish in high school? Were we just living, learning, and putting it out there? Now, being older and unable to release our thoughts and struggles in the locker hallways, we are made to feel as though we have to keep them to ourselves; deal with our pain alone.

Take me back to when mistakes were socially acceptable. Where the cafeteria was the hub of gossip, and your trusted friends were your therapist. Where your heart would burst when talking to your crush. Where love was worth skipping class for. Worth fighting for. Worth quite literally, anything.

And now here we are. Made to pretend we are young adults who somehow know how to handle those same instances. Those same feelings in a “mature” manner…whatever that is supposed to mean.

I miss it…I miss all of it. Well…not ALL of it. I just miss the substance. The importance of your actions and words holding weight to someone else. Everything meant something.

I haven’t loved or been loved in so long, I’m scared I have forgotten how to. That I’ve forgotten what it feels like and will therefore not know when it’s right in front of me. When did love become so scary? When did the risk factor become more than getting caught texting your crush in class? I’m talking so scary you remove it from your life, change you first name and never look back. I’m not sure if I have given up on love, or cultivated a life that learned to speak a language without it. I’ve been left voiceless. Maybe that’s what love is. Loud, noisy and sometimes too much to understand. All I know is that a world with sound is so much more entertaining, than one in silence. But how do you make it so both don’t become unbearable?

Self love. When does it become, “I’m happy with myself” to “I’m happy without anyone”? If I push away all the love that comes my way is that a form of self defense or self harm? Tell me, is that really self love? How am I to know when I love myself enough to put myself out there? Love myself enough to risk the possibility of getting hurt for the sake of a new love. Is my own love not enough?

I’m not sure, but I know that even on the days I feel as though love doesn’t exists, I know it does. Like a ghost forever haunting my mind. Always there, always trying to make its presence known. And here I am doing everything in my power to believe it isn’t real. The positive? Love is a native language everyone grows up with and that is something that can never be lost. Perhaps deep within us. Perhaps dark. But there…always there and waiting to brought out for the rest of the world to experience.

Perhaps thats really what self love is. It’s not about learning how to love yourself. It’s about learning to share the love you’ve defined and hold within you, with others.

Learn the language of love and speak it.