Re-Education: Lessons of Love

Love: (noun)-A profound tender, passionate affection for another person. -A feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. -sexual passion or desire. -Term of endearment. -Personification of sexual affection, as Eros or Cupid. -Strong predilection, enthusiasm, or like of anything. -The object or thing so liked.
(verb)-To have strong like for; take pleasure in. -To need or require. -To embrace or kiss -To have sexual intercourse.

This is the one thing we are constantly re-educated on in every type of relationship we forge. Be it the right way, the wrong way…up, down, diagonal, right triangle, rectangle, cube, or cylinder way…..We re-learn it. The pain of it…the joy of it….the hope of it.

From birth we strive for it. Starting out with the love of our parents, then our family. Then as you get older you want them to leave you the hell alone and seek a new kind of love in friendship. When that comes to be not enough, you hunt for a partner. Someone to share the love you may have stored up for that one person. Some of us being lucky, finding that ‘one’ instantly. The rest of us prowl and devour lover after lover. Giving our all, and still failing. Left starving while the rest of the lioness sit watching, full and happy. And you hold those well fed winches in contempt as you walk past them scowling, wanting what they have.

You may find yourself in a one sided relationship. Where you give and give, and love as hard as you can. While they just sit there, taking it all and giving nothing back.

Then there’s those ‘complicated relationships’….Where they don’t want to be with you, but you belong to them. They sit there and tell you how great you are and how much they are glad you’re around. But when you bring up wanting something more, they let you go. Leaving you with that ‘lets just be friends’ line we all hate so much.

Then the lovely, long-distance relationships….You sit at home, waiting for their phone call or their text message or their email. You talk for hours and plan what your ‘too far away’ meeting will be like. You’re happiest when your talking to them. Then the communication starts to dwindle slowly. They don’t call until maybe, midnight…. Gradually, you just don’t hear from them at all, and then they send you a message a month later telling you that they found someone else. Or, even worse, you find out on your own that they’ve picked up someone new. Then every once in a while they drunk text you, or email you, about how screwed up they are without you and how good you were to them and how much they want you back. (This last bit may apply to any relationship really)

Yet, when you finally get that love. That pure happiness that is almost completely impossible to come across…You have no idea what to do with it. Either you push it away because you aren’t used to it, or you embrace it.

It hurts like hell when you are let go or you let go, in any relationship you may have been it. You loved them, you planed your life around them, they were your everything. And they just didn’t want you anymore. Or, you loved them…but things just weren’t working and you would have rather let them go than hurt them even more. It doesn’t matter who you are, or how macho you clame to be…You are pained by that lose. You have to pick yourself up again, and go back out on the hunt. Re-evaluate everything you think you did wrong or right and try again. It’s bloody exhausting! Gay, straight, lesbian, or bi…It’s a bloody madhouse when your in the game!

So, for the love of anything!….If you’re hunting, and you think you found someone. Be a team player and let them know you’re interested. Don’t be obnoxious and cat call. Man up, go over to them and say; "Hey, I know this is strange. But you seem like you are an interesting person. Would you like to go out on a date with me sometime?"… Throw in a complement if you feel you have to, and that’s it. Let things whittle away as they may. Try not to go too fast or too slow…There’s always a bloody in-between. If it doesn’t work, then try again. If it does, Harah! for you.

Love is trial and error, it is a part of life. You can either deal with it, or block it out. Either way, it will always be there.

I’ve struggled with this ‘love’ thing. Tried like hell to perfect it. Once or twice, I may have even had it. And only once did I screw up. He loved me, no matter what I did or looked like in the morning…I was beautiful to him. I had a damn good man, willing to do anything and everything he thought he needed to do for me. He treated me like a queen, and I let him go. He gave me what I wasn’t used to and I pushed it away. I still love him, but he’s gone and with someone else. Now, I regret letting him slip away……
I’ve even done the long-distance thing, I was young. But I loved him, love him, more than anything. Things didn’t work out the way I had dreamed, but we still remain in contact for the past…let me think, 10 years. He may not feel anything of what we had anymore, but the way I feel is never gonna change. And I am ridiculously proud of him for being a soldier, and even more proud to know him……
Right now, I’ve been so deep in love with someone for 8 years. My friends make fun of me sometimes for it, tell me to suck it up and ask him already. But I know, I feel…it wont happen, no matter how great of friends we are…..Hell, I love a man that is never, ever gonna love me back. He may say he cares about me from time to time when he’s feeling like being nice, but he’ll never give a crap the way I ended up doing in the month we ‘hung out’….

My advice….Don’t be afraid to love, though try not to love so easily. Yes, it is so unbelievably possible to love more than one or someone you haven’t even met face to face. Never let yourself think less of you when someone rejects you. You’re still amazing, and someone will see it. You just have to find them, or let them find you. Yes, time is a winch and it moves way too slow. Distance is its equal, and sucks just as much. Take solace in your music, books, movies, writing or what have you…Let their arms hold you while you dance and wait for the real thing.