Love and my last post.

Again, I apologize for being less than consistent in my posting. I will try to be better in the coming months.

Now, I alluded to the fact in my last post that this here blog has become a bit of a different thang than it started as. I have, at least once, pointed out that I can see how many of you are reading this. Now, it maybe only one or two of you that open it a whole bunch of times each day, or it could actually be close to that many. I find that oddly pleasing and equally disturbing at the same time. You could say, I am sitting here shaking my head with a very big satisfied smile.

My last post created a rather interesting flurry of activity. First and most exciting to me, people commented on it, right there on the blog! Yippee! I love that. Thank You!

The number of emails was surprising since it did confirm in a way that there is not just a few folks visiting.

Then of course, as I had expected to happen, someone called me on the love thing. That I had said, I know what love is. However, and I should have capitalized that and italicized and perhaps underlined that but hey, why be ostentatious? (just using that word is enough for me!)

However, who asked me was just about at surprising as all the things I had posted about. Damned if this sharing self with masses is not turning into a cornucopia of shock, bewilderment and WTF chuckles.

OK, I’ve prefaced this plenty and finished my ice cream. I am sitting up straight at my new desk, with my home made shelves above it and the fancy cabinet underneath, also home made. Very satisfying. Good thing too because now, I am going to attempt to explain what I think love is.

There was a time in my life when I would regurgitate, “Love is when you want more and the best for someone even above yourself.” (Or some crap like that, what the hell did I know back then?) I would also say things like, Love and Hate occupy the same end of the spectrum with indifference being the other end.

Then there was the stage where I was sure love was that, she always on my mind, I am constantly wondering about her, thing. Turns out that is obsession and distrust. I also since then heard that saying (Paraphrased I’m sure) ” You dislike the things in people you dislike about yourself” Or is it, “Un-trust worthy people are un-trusting” Whatever it is, it means, if you are jealous and not trusting, it is because you think your partner thinks Like You Think or acts Like You Act.

Then I went through a “so much in common phase” which really just meant, more time together, more likely to have sex. This meant, the other gender at work. Whole own post, novella on that topic. Lets leave it at, bad idea.

Fixers and Fixees – great relationships for keeping at least one person busy and the other temporarily happy. Not love and a total waste of time on both ends. Hobby dating I like to refer to it as now.

A couple of things I am sure I have learned, and that is my way of saying, I believe these things I am about to tell you to be true. Not possible and not how I feel today but, true in all situations, events, instances of any two people relating on any level more intimate than passing in opposite directions in any type of motorized vehicle.

1) In ever relationship – one half cares more than the other half. Cares more for the other half, cares more about the ‘relationship’, more about the possibilities, about the future and perhaps, even the past. As one friend of mine put it, “there is always someone more invested” Hows that for romantic?

2) Time doesn’t heal a fucking thing. You do not get over, you simply get used to. You incorporate your pain, sadness, dis-ease, amazement, shock, disappointment et al. You make it part of yourself until you can use it like a new tool. Like an instrument, you practice and tune and play it until you are the only one that can create with it. It is yours alone, no one else can be the virtuoso of your suffering. Once you accept the instrument as just a part of yourself, when you stop fighting the tool and ‘love’ it, it loves you back. It allows you to do amazing things with it.

“Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
-Ani Difranco

A very wise and wonderful friend sent me the above quote. Hell yes, 88 keys on the noggin. That sums it up well.  Or to be more exact, that is what falling in or being in love is to me.

What is “love”? (this is what  I get for spouting off that I knew – damn good thing there is more ice cream)

**Love, in my oh so humble opinion, is the ability (not the desire – desire very different thing) to accept someone just exactly as they are. No expectation, no limitation, no change required AND the ability (not the desire or intention – very different thing) to forgive them for it. Infinitely and with out qualification, just forgive.

That being said, I have to say I do not know how to love all the way or even to the fourth floor for that matter. I am the only constant in every miserable woman’s life that has been involved with me. (read it again) I am pretty freaking sure I’ve never met anyone else that can either. I have some friends, Christian and Janene – these folks come out in the 98 percentile. (I might go higher but then I would have to explain that too and I cannot).

I still believe it means wanting the very best for someone, their safety, happiness, that they are loved, with or (most likely) without me. I still believe it is worth every second of effort i have put into screwing it up. I believe now that making love is better than having sex almost every time. (ice cream helps both) I believe you get more than one chance but that each one is harder than the last. Metal fatigues went bent repeatedly. “Work hardening” – what makes the wire hanger break when you bend it a few times. I think people are the same.

The messed up thing is, everyone has their own tolerance, pain threshold. Some will put up with things that others cry to read about. Some seek it. Some “have it all” according to others then still they jump in the bath with a toaster.

Ya know, I don’t know shit on the subject so, sorry for rambling. Some one asked me to define what I thought Love is (was?) I tried – up there **.

Normally I write spontaneously, whatever is on my mind. This had a hint of book report behind it when I sat down. It has taken a very long time. I know, hard to tell but it has. It bums me out a bit to look at it and feel like I said nothing to answer the question. Sorry.

Peace, Ant-Knee