“I love you enough to feed you into the wood chipper head first,” I announced mirthfully to my husband the other night on our way to dinner.
Which got me thinking about all of the ways we express love that are often not interpreted as such.
Sometimes love is a sweet hug and a kind word, a welcome home after a long day.
Sometimes love is a playful smack on the butt, an adult version of, “Tag, you’re it!”
Sometimes love is expressed in the little things, the gestures that say, “I see you.”
Sometimes love is found in offering the extra helping and sometimes it’s found by accepting that unwanted offering.
Sometimes love is granting space, giving the gift of time and freedom.
Sometimes love is overwhelming, flooding the senses. And sometimes it’s more like a dull ache fading into the background.
Sometimes love is accepting the onslaught of frustration and unease that often releases once the distressed feel safe.
Sometimes love is a difficult decision that you know will hurt somebody in the moment yet be better for them in long run.
Sometimes love is saying you’re sorry even when you’re still angry and accepting an apology even though you know you’re right. And sometimes it’s admitting you’re wrong.
Sometimes love is enforcing boundaries and learning to say, “No,” as any parent is well aware.
Sometimes love is expressed through frustration, not at the person but the helplessness you feel about their situation.
Sometimes love is letting go and sometimes it’s refusing to release your grip.
Sometimes love is giving in and sometimes it’s about giving someone the confidence to do it on their own.
Love is the action and it’s also the intent.
And learning to see love requires that sometimes you look behind the curtain, that you shelve your initial assumptions and reactions and instead consider that maybe what you’re really seeing is, “I love you.”
And sometimes love is joking that if I ever get angry enough to kill you, I’ll be sure to make it quick 🙂
I know longer think I know anything about love. But sadly I think , sonetimes its not enough.
Its important to know what kind of love is wanted and what kind is unwanted.
I feel like child again, feeling my way through the complex chemistry of love. 😄
What a fantastic list of the different aspects of what love is and is not. I glad you clarified the wood chipper because I was a bit confused. I have joked with friends that they should allow their spouse to kill them instead of filing a divorce, being that it is less painful and quicker than the court of family law. 🙂
As always your writing depicts things perfectly. And yet I’m still perfectly perplexed. Like Patrick says above, I’m glad you explained the chipper! I also agree with Patrick on his jokes with friends. Jokes, yes, but right on target… it hurts. And here I am at 56, almost 6 years after separation and a long drawn out cruel, divorce. (Let’s not forget unfair and unjust), and yet I was made into the enemy as I had him leave after finding out about the cheating I never even considered. I was shocked. I was devastated. I was just someone he once knew that was crazy and neglected him, which gave him the right to cheat. Even friends and family believe(d) it. I lost everything. Including loved ones I never imagined. I lost myself and am still struggling to find who I used to be. But better. Because going through hell and stopping to stay for years makes you stronger no matter how much it hurts and aches in your gut and heart and soul.
Love? I have a lot to share with someone someday who hopefully values me as I value myself and what I think love is. Love is the little things. Knowing without having to speak what the other feels. Love is remembering the little things your partner says that they don’t even know you’ve paid attention to. Love is holding someone when they’re sad, just because they’re sad, or happy, and you want to be with that person no matter of happy, sad, bad or good. Because that’s what love is to me. I think. Maybe I’ll know someday. I do know what love is not, and for that lesson learned we should all hold someone’s heart carefully in our hands.
After living 2o years with someone that didn’t love me, although he said it everyday, talk is cheap. I’m a show me you love me girl. If you love me, it means thinking about me and putting gas in my car when it’s low, or thinking about me while you’re out running errands because you see some little something that makes you think, my wife would like that. Putting the dishes away or washing a load of clothes on your day off. I had enough of the “talk” when I was married before.