What's Love Got to do with it?

The other week, after reading a Facebook post, I got to thinking about love and what it all means.

I’m a sap when it comes to love. I’m the first one to admit it. I have always loved with my whole heart. In all honesty, I have no idea how else to love. If you have me, you have me 100%, and I will fight with everything in me for you.

When I was younger, love was romantic songs, red roses, long walks along the beach, spontaneity and unbelievable sexual chemistry.

It was romantic gestures and undying, unbridled passion.

It was stolen kisses and secret smiles that promised the world.

It was gentle whispers and even gentler caresses that set your skin on fire and your heart beating so fast that you believed the whole room could hear it.

It was conversations that went on for hours as you lay spent in each other's arms, neither of you wanting to close your eyes and sleep because the reality you were in was too beautiful to step away from.

As I have gotten older, whilst that hasn’t changed completely, I’ve begun to realise that actually, it's so much more than what Hollywood has presented to us for so long. Whilst there is all that to enjoy, there is so much more to love, and it doesn’t just revolve around romance, but around everything that life throws at you. The good, the bad and the ugly.

As a teenager, I fell into what I thought was love so very fiercely.

I wrote love songs and pined for hearts that would never be mine.

I wrote poetry and plays and listened to music that sang of unrequited love and broken hearts.

I wept for the hearts that ignored mine and instead chose to love the skinnier, more popular girls in the way that typical teenagers do.

Love was the proverbial minefield of heartache and pain. Unlike the movies where the girl gets her guy at the end, I could never quite close the deal.

Maybe I intentionally chased the hearts that I knew would reject me.

Maybe it was part of the creative soul that I harboured. The one that subconsciously needed the pain and the rejection to be able to write, sing, paint, and create. The soul that was as deep as an ocean and that hid a thousand hopes and dreams in its murky depths beneath the crippling doubt that ate away daily at my belief that I could have the world.

They say an artist is a creature plagued by demons and I can testify to the absolute truth of that statement. We truly are.

We feel in a way that nobody really understands.

We are crippled by uncertainty and doubt, and as our own biggest critics, we tear ourselves apart so much more voraciously than anybody else ever could.

We see the world so very differently, and as a result, we feel emotion in a way that leaves deep chasms in our souls to either be filled with love or pain.

We have an unrealistic view of the world based on the words that we write, the music we listen to, the scenes that we paint and the views we see through our lens.

We ache for acceptance but don’t really have any idea what that looks like.

We have never really learned to accept who we are because that would mean giving up some of what makes us who we are and as artists, we harbour extremes.

Darkness and light.

All-consuming love and irrational anger.

Passion and indifference.

Calm and excitement.

We are the definition of black and white emotionally and it doesn’t get any easier as we get older, especially for those people who try to love us.

The combination of youth and love was exciting, like being sucked up into a tornado of endless possibilities and overwhelming emotions, but forty something love is a whole new ball game and has depths that I couldn’t have ever begun to imagine in my late teens and twenties.

According to some, you are destined for three great loves in your life.

Your first love is the one you tend to experience as a teenager. That tornado of possibilities that is full of hopes and dreams. This is the love that will tend to shape your ideas of how love should be, but for most, is more about us than anyone else.

Its raw and all consuming, overwhelming and devastating, uncontrollable, exquisite and painful in equal measures. It will break you in ways you never thought possible, but if you let it, that devastation will allow you to rebuild yourself as you begin to understand who you are, what you want and what you will accept in your life.

Your second love is the one that will truly break you. Also known as the ‘hard love’, this is the one that teaches the hardest lessons that you will ever learn about love. It teaches pain and what you need to avoid in your next relationship. Unfortunately, you will continue this pattern of painful relationships until you learn the lessons that this love is trying to teach you.

I know this from personal experience and I am only now beginning to embrace those lessons. Honestly, the last 18 months has been an incredible period of growth for me after repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Like they say, the definition of stupid is doing the same over and over whilst expecting a different result! (Insert face slap here).

The third, and hopefully the last great love of your life is the one that is unexpected and will surprise you. It won’t be what your teenage, imagined love was, but will instead far surpass everything you could have considered. It won’t follow the rules that you expected love to follow but will flow naturally in a way that only unconditional love can. It will break all your ideas of how love should be and will not only teach you how to accept love, but how to give love in a way that you have never done or understood before.

Unconditional love, outside of being a parent is a strange thing. All of a sudden, it becomes about so much more than you and what you can get from it.

It becomes about them and what they need with a true acceptance of who they are.

They may not be perfect, but quite simply, they are perfect for you.

It becomes about being there no matter what and loving them however difficult things may get.

The heart that’s meant to love you unconditionally will always fight for you when you want to give up.

It will pick you up when things get tough and give you its smile when yours has gone.

It will support you and love you, even when you feel like you are completely unlovable.

It will embrace your darkness because that darkness is part of who you are, and it will hold you until you find your light again.

If you let it, magic happens in the embrace of a heart that loves you unconditionally.

To love with your whole heart, unconditionally - it’s the greatest gift you can give someone.

Opening yourself up to the possibility of hurt and heartbreak is a terrifying thing, but if that is reciprocated, it’s the most exhilarating and incredible thing.

The rewards far outweigh the risks, but you have to be brave enough to step into the unknown and take the chance because if you don’t, you’ll never know.

Until next time......