There was much waffling over whether or not I would post this. I had to rewrite it like three times before I was satisfied enough with it that I didn't just delete the whole thing. If you can't tell, I've kind of started myself on a spiritual journey this summer, doing a lot of introspection and soul searching. It's also made me feel very creative so if nothing else I'll get all sorts of cool art out of this.
"I love you."
What meaning do these words have anymore? We repeat them a thousand times a day, often without any thought. I love you means goodbye. I love you means can I kiss you. I love you means I'm glad you're here.
But when I think about those moments of pure love where I look at someone and all thought leaves my mind, all the voices in my head shut up for the power of what I'm experiencing, in these tiny moments words fail me. They're moments full of innocence and an intensity that pull you direct to the bone.
In these moments, my instinct is not to say some stammered "I love you," but to act. I want to reach out, to caress away a tear or kiss surprised lips. To laugh with pure, unfiltered joy and spin in circles until I fall down crying because I'm smiling so hard.
Unconditional
I've said this in previous posts, but love is unconditional. Love encompasses and rises above whatever else we may be feeling. If it doesn't, we should question whether or not it's actually love or if it is love, then what other emotions and influences are at work.
It's possible to love someone you hate and hate someone you love. If you don't believe that, just look at your parents. The hate may or may not come and go, but the love endures. Or for another example, look at a small child. Hurt them and they will react in rage and sadness, but as soon as that passes it's like nothing ever happened.
Have the heart of a child tempered with the control of experience. It's a scary thing to do because from experience we learn to harden ourselves, to protect and shield ourselves from all the pain and misery the world throws at us, or in some cases that we throw at ourselves. We're afraid to let go of those protections, to make ourselves vulnerable and open and let our love express itself.
It takes work to break habits we've been in the process of establishing since early childhood, but as the tired adage goes, practice makes perfect.
More often than I like to admit, I've let fear hold me back; fear that my expression of love is somehow inappropriate for the moment or for the person I would be showing it to. But there have been a few times where I've pushed past that and bridged that gap and let my love manifest itself.
The first time this happened in recent memory, was my first kiss. Which I feel understandably uncomfortable writing about that here, but discomfort is just fear of judgment, and if you come from a strong place within yourself no matter what anyone else says their judgments cannot hurt you.
First Kiss:
We'd been talking online for what felt like months, though in reality it had only been a few weeks. There was an excitement and reciprocation of interest I'd never experienced before. We discovered each other through some mutual friends and started talking out of my lack of inhibition when it comes to talking to friendly strangers, or in this case, not so strange people I don't know.
One of our mutual friends was putting on a poetry reading in my area and being that we're both poets of a sort it seemed like the perfect opportunity and motive to get together in person. The only thing was that he would be coming from out of town. Not really thinking of any deeper implications, I offered my dorm room, opening my door and my bed. After all, what is mine is my friend's (except for my toothbrush, but that's kind of a different circumstance).
He caught a bus, or rather several different buses, on a Friday afternoon and was to meet me after my classes ended for the day. Sure enough, I wasn't out of my last class for a full 10 minutes when I got a voicemail from an unrecognized number.
"Hey Danny, it's me on somebody else's phone, just letting you know I might be a little later than expected since I have to transfer buses downtown before I make it to campus."
I waited with my friend, Dani taking silly pictures on one of the nearby sculptures. I saw him before he saw me and almost instantly had this huge, silly grin plastered on my face.
We spent several hours together before the Salt Lines performance talking and hanging out, basically getting to know each other better. Laying with my head in his lap, I noticed he had strong hands. I got to hold those hands later at the performance and again when we reconnected with some friends. I felt safe in them.
Back in my room after all of this as we lay in my bed, he felt warm sharing that space with me, his arms wrapped around me. I think we were both drifting off when I rolled over. I wanted to look in the face this wonderful person beside me. I think I held my breath for a moment before I leaned in and kissed him on the lips. On and off throughout the day I'd felt called to do that, but this was the first time I stopped my fear from holding me back.
It tickled sweetly and it was an unfamiliar pressure on my lips. It didn't go much farther beyond that, it'd been a long day for both of us, but I think that was as far as I was ready for at that point.
My point
Looking back, I'm tempted to call that a beautiful moment in my life, but realistically, all firsts are beautiful in their own way. It means a lot to me though that I've been able to find the peace within myself to think of this moment without any bitterness. So often we let the end of a relationship ruin any happy memories from that relationship or worse, get so caught up in missing those happy memories that we don't let go of the relationship and it hurts us.
But by sharing the experience of my first kiss here on my blog, I'm trying to show how it happened in a moment of love when I let my guard down and just let it happen. I didn't need words to say everything I expressed with a kiss. Of course it doesn't always have to be a kiss, depending on your relationship with the other person and the situation at hand, love could express itself as a hug or a smile or even something as simple as eye contact.
Love is a gift like the air we breathe. We all have it and we can give it freely to anyone. You cannot contain it and you cannot see it, but you feel it when it's missing and you feel it when it's there.
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