My entire life has been a love story. As students, we are taught to search for the deeper meaning in stories: the theme and motifs of a tale. My short story, my open-ended novella, has been about love, the one thing that hasn’t failed me yet.
And like so many other stories, the meaning changes, but the theme is still the same. Love changes, but it’s still love.
As a toddler, I was loved through clean clothes, kisses, and cuddles. "I love you" didn’t really register because my young ears only heard the songs on the radio or the sounds of my sisters playing with one another.
My mother tucked me into my bed or held me in her own, my father showered me in love through tickle time and evenings spent toddling around the house together. Love was found in my mother's arms, my head on her chest. Love was found in smiles.
By the time I had reached elementary school, I had a better idea of what love was. It was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a bottle of juice in my lunch box. Love was my mother waiting at the bus stop on rainy days with my sisters and me, making herself late for work while making us girls feel warm and safe.
Love was my dad holding my hand as I walked downstairs to make sure I didn’t trip and hurt myself. Love was my grandparents calling to talk to a 7-year-old for hours about her little life and her little heart. Love was patient hands trying new hairstyles I begged for and helping with homework assignments I didn’t care about. Love was something I felt was natural. I didn’t have to work for that kind of love; it just happened.
But as I grew up, love began to change. Middle school came and I was in crisis. Love was no longer my mom’s arms or my dad’s smile. Love was a boy with acne scars and time to talk to me after school. Love was holding his hand underneath the desk in the library. Love was my first kiss. Love was his jacket, oversized and coated in his cologne.
And then love was my first heartbreak, sad songs playing on my iPod Shuffle, the lights turned off, crying my 14-year-old heart to sleep.
If only I had known then what heartbreak really felt like.
Love was a boy and then it was my mom holding me while I cried over my lack of self-confidence. Love was my mom telling me I didn’t need someone else to tell me I was beautiful or to make me feel wanted because she would always want me. She would always need me.
I know I rolled my eyes then; I know I scoffed and rolled away from her open arms and pretended I didn’t hear her comforting words. I did listen to the sympathy and wisdom in her voice, though. I know I began to heal when my sisters and my parents were stitching my heart back together, night after night.
Love was my sisters cooking me hearty meals, hugging me just because, and talking trash about those boys who were “no good” and “not worth my time.”
Love was no longer tragic kisses at football games; love was support.
Love meant home instead of risk.
Of course, like all things do, love changed again.
Love became my best friends, tangled in pillows and blankets and midnight laughs, weaving intricate inside jokes into the fabric of our friendship.
Love was sneaking out, not to hang out with boys (that came later), but to see my friend who lived a few streets over. Love was sleepovers and staying up all night. Love was my first year of high school, locking arms with my two best friends in the world, taking the first steps into our future.
And love was comfortable. Love was laughter and burps and making funny videos. Love taught me to be silly. Love taught me to find beauty in the nights spent at home, in the peace of wild dreams.
Love was my best friends -- my adopted sisters -- making macaroni and cheese at midnight and prank-calling boys and, eventually, love changed again as it must.
I began to allow my heart to open to the possibility of dating again, to finding someone I could walk the halls of school with, a boy to accompany me to various sporting events. I wanted to love and be loved, but not in the childish family or friend way. I wanted tragic romance again (apparently I had yet to learn my lesson after the first heartbreak).
I threw myself into something I thought could only be described as magic.
I threw myself into happiness in the green eyes of a tall, blonde boy.
I threw myself into a rollercoaster of thoughts and passion and late-night phone calls.
I fell in love with a boy, and, this time, I thought I knew what love was. My previous relationships all dissolved into childhood flirtations. I knew then that love was deeper, madder, and crazier than just holding hands and feeling good about myself.
Love was helping him with his homework. Love was texting him all night because I didn’t want to fall asleep without him. Love was a date, I in my skirt, he in his dress pants. Love was that long car ride home, our favorite songs playing on the radio.
Love was reminding him to call his mom, clean his bedroom so I could come over, wash his car so he didn’t have to do it that weekend.
Love was words. Love was a letter tucked into his uniform. Love was a phone call every night. Love was sticky notes on his bathroom mirror. Love was poetry to me.
Most of all, though, that love was something I still don’t quite understand. And that love was mine. And that love was mine to give. And that love was his to take. And he did take it, and he ran with it.
Love was once again tragic. Love was something I promised myself I would never feel again.
I didn’t want to feel that vulnerability, that chaos in my heart again. I was done.
My family still loved me, but like missed phone calls I refused to return, I purposefully neglected to love them back for a while. I fought with my sisters; I disobeyed my parents; I stopped doing my chores because I failed to see the good in it all. I refused to realize that they were simply doing what was natural, loving.
I was learning how high school was bittersweet love and goodbyes.
Love was a summer spent under the sun with those same best friends I had my entire high school career, being my cheerleaders, my counselors, my sisters.
When I moved to college, I wanted to find that love again -- that friendship, that family feeling.
What I learned, though, is that to love in college is to love momentarily.
Love became flighty.
You have a class with someone, become great friends with them, and then you have to break the in-class barrier. You have to work for it. You have to rearrange schedules, take 10 minutes for coffee every now and then to catch up on life. You have to do things you never thought you would. You accompany one another to get tattoos and piercings.
Love is giving someone a ride to the city to shop for a cute new outfit for a date. Love is holding your best friend's hand as she answers the phone call she’s been waiting for all week.
Love is a night spent lying on the quad, blowing pipe dreams like smoke into the late night air.
And then love became a look. Love became a smile again. Love became risky again.
But this time, love was different.
My family lived in another town, hours away. My best friends had lives of their own, boyfriends, different classes than mine, different worlds within my same universe. And eventually, after many late-night Netflix-and-popcorn marathons spent in my dorm room alone, I realized that love doesn't go through these phases so decidedly. Sometimes, love is ongoing.
I learned that you don't have to talk to one another every day. You don't have to hang out constantly, or kiss every second of the day, or buy each other things so often.
Sometimes love is simply a feeling. It's a safety blanket.
And there is a comfort in knowing you’re safe. There is a comfort in a seat belt, a life jacket, a warm house. There is comfort in knowing how little power the world has over you when you feel truly safe. There is a beauty in being overwhelmed by peace. I never fully understood how people said their love felt like coming home, because to me love was formal. Home is anything but that. Home is where you take off your shoes, where you eat like a pig, where you remove all of the stress from your day, and disappear into a bed of quiet comfort.
Home is where the heart is, apparently, and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out where my heart was or what it even looked like.
It has taken me so many breakups, burned bridges, regretted words, and lonely nights to realize that love is simply a feeling manifested in our hearts, rationalized in our minds, and constantly growing. Just as we live, we love. and so as we love, we give life.
There are so many lives we aren’t living. There are so many hearts we could have been endowed. There are so many souls we could have been cursed to bear. It's a beautiful thing to be able to love, and a rare thing to know love when you see it.
