Notes on Love

Mush and mirth....random musings

Recently I was badgered with the question “Why don’t you want love? Don’t you want to feel one with someone?”. I was at a loss of words. Not because I couldn’t open up to love but because I hadn’t thought of it like this person had. Their description of the love was so set, structured and cemented in the stories of modern films that I just did not get the expectation.

Now, don’t get me to be a cold-hearted witch ( I aspire to be one as the route of empathy has only given me multiple heartbreaks). I do have love in my life, lots of it. In the form of my amazing grandparents - it is nourishing. In the form of my beautiful friends - it is all accepting and abundant. Then why was there a gap in conceiving the notion of someone else’s idea of love?

The popular belief that all of us define love in the same way is mildly amusing. Me for one would think that love , like everything else in our lives is shaped extensively by our environs, upbringing, nurture and people we closely associated ourselves with.

I’ve also thought of other people , especially in the sense of romantic partners as a medium to express what was deeply embedded in me. All the love has already existed in me and I could shape and mould how I gave it out into the world. The idea that love is becoming in entirety was slightly confounding. I have also tried to love people the way they needed to be loved rather than throw a singular expression and call it ‘this is the only way I know how’.

Over time, this live has been met with more love, warmth, grace and sometimes even helplessness. It comes naturally to living beings to recognize and exchange love but often you meet people who are too broken to acknowledge that this love is coming to them. I have been a witness to many forms of love and the responses to it have been varying too.

A poet once said “Love is a violent act” for there is a looming uncertainty at all times. When speaking of the same , there has immense acceptance from the friendships I have cultivated over the years. This is where I feel loved even if we don’t use the word itself often.

To me, they have held space, supported my unhinged ideas, collected me when I shattered under the weight of the world. They have not asked for me to be a certain version of me, have embraced all of my moods , extremities and eccentricities. They have never made fun of my 100 hobbies or asked me to pick a lane and stay there.

To me, this is love. Where I can be wholly, achingly myself.

And maybe I cannot understand the definition set upon by someone ever, but that is completely fine. As it is fine for people outside my circle to not understand my love.