LOVE HURTS

Sometimes, people disappear. This is true. For Love is not always a duet with two feeding off each other. No. Sometimes, the house is standing only because you’re carrying it. I tell you, it’s hard to tell how long this must continue before it becomes abuse. All I know is, there are seasons in everyone’s life when they have enough strength only for themselves. And if you are the one who has to share this season with them, ah, you will not find it easy at all.

But, once, I was a teenager. And slammed the door in my mother’s face. When I opened it, she was there. So I learned, there is that day on which our Love must be unconditional. Not because you massaged my feet, or will bring me home a box of chocolates. I’ve watched it on Discovery channel. How, within minutes of being born, a baby deer is nudged to its feet. But it takes a bit longer for the children of men to learn this lesson, that the World does not revolve around their needs. In the interim, we clean their bums and swaddle them, feed and protect them, knowing they may walk away, one day, in anger or irritation, at the things we become in our old age.

But, once, I was a child. And woke up to the whispered sounds of my father standing by the door, praying for me; gently tiptoeing away when he was done.  And I lay there the rest of the night wondering - how many times does he do this? Not an easy lesson, this one, how Love must always do more than it can ever boast of, or be given credit for. But, some days, they will NEED you, even when they are asleep and do not know it. On days like that you will have to find something more motivating than your natural desire for a standing ovation to reach out. So, let me tell you this.

Look into the eyes of those you love, and read what lies therein. For, I tell you, there are days when those eyes will beg you not to walk away, not to abandon me now in a darkness so deep I cannot talk about it. You will see them grow bleak with tears, but every time you ask, I will stubbornly say, ‘Nothing. I am fine. Leave me the hell alone!’ At this moment, I beg you, listen to your own heart, quieten the static that is always our ego when the love we offer is flung back in our faces. Yes. And if in that still small place where our inner truth resides, you hear a voice – the dependable voice of your unerring intuition – and it says to you, ‘Stay’. Please…stay.

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