by Angela Lovell
I ask myself, “What is Love about?”
That is such a huge question for four seemingly simple little words.
Is it that “Media Love” load of absolute crap being crammed into our faces daily at every blink of the eye or every time we power up our communication systems, showing us what love is supposed to look like? Is this where I’m supposed to learn what love is, through the schemes of some new profiteer?
Whoever puts it out there though must have it right somehow, as I sit here questioning that stabbing silent empty pain realizing I’m not getting any flowers tomorrow or a candied trinket that proves someone out there must “Media Love” me.
Did I fail because I’m not getting any pretty stones that I can bling across another’s vision, meriting my worth so I can puff up and say, “See, I do matter!”? Is my significance really based on compressed carbon? It must be true in some way though, because that’s what that jewelry commercial told me.
Maybe it’s because I’m just a girl and can’t see “Media Love” until my knight in shining armor rides in and swoops me up showering me with sweet kisses and tender words making me truly whole again. Then he gallops away with me away under fluttering cherry blossoms with Orff’s Carmina Burana playing softly in the background . . . just like in the movies.
Was it the media that came up with this heart-shaped shit that represents this so-called metaphorical love? ‘Cause I can promise you my heart looks nothing like those sweet cupid-doll symbols fluttering across some beloved’s vision when they think of their amore. My heart looks more like the dripping prize clutched in the Mayan priest’s hand and me grappling to stuff it back before I realize the impact of what really happened.
How can I have done so many things right, sacrificed so much of my soul, physically bled, wept until the puddles started flowing into streams, taken on someone else’s pain, tried to change myself into what people told me I’m supposed to be, but now I don’t deserve this “Media Love” because I’m not intimately receiving it back? Where is the sense in that?
Was it that I wasn’t committing myself enough? Was I so egocentric that I was unwilling to prostrate myself before the God of Love so that I would never learn to understand the simplest meaning? Did I truly just not do it right because I didn’t atone properly? Am I being punished because I chose not to give birth and walked away from detrimental marriages and therefore am being denied true love?
Maybe Love is based in how you give it back. I know there’s true love in how much I’ve loved the animals that have graced my life. I wholeheartedly gave them my love and my soul was rended when they crossed… or left… or I had to leave. I know that love was real. Is that how I’m supposed to have based every reasoning remaining in my existence? That all I need to do is give love to know love?
I like that last thought process the best, but what about being present in love; just being “present” in love? I’ve spent so many years constructing masterpieces of architecture, that when it comes down to it, they are just walls. No matter how prettily I adorn them, they are still just walls; walls that I’ve built to protect myself against love.
It’s ridiculous to think of how long I’ve pondered what love is, and I’m the one standing in the way of my own understanding. I’m the one preventing the transformation because it wasn’t scripted exactly how my OCD tendencies had it planned out.
I’ve decided I’m just going to stand up, shut up, remain still, stop trying to control, stop trying to manipulate every single thing and allow love to flow so something else can happen. I am going to stop trying to be on the receiving end of love . . . because that’s not what it’s all about.
I am going to stop trying to be on the giving end of love… because that’s not what it’s all about. If you look into who we are as a collective whole of our blessed creator, we are truly one. Instead of looking for the explanation and answers somewhere else, instead of searching for that completion of self through the baubles and idols of media, I am looking inside myself for we are the very epitome of love itself.
I am the beloved. We are the beloved. I am love. We are love. And that truly is what love is all about.
And so it is. Blessed be.
Angela Lovell was born in Germany and landed in her beloved Burque in the early 80s. She completed her schooling at UNM in Albuquerque, NM and is a local family practice Physician Assistant. She started writing poetry around 2002, but took an 8 year hiatus recently picking up the pen again in 2015.