It’s super trendy for people to ramble on and on about love.
Love for yourself. Love for your neighbor. Love for a stranger. Love for everyone you’ve met. And love for everyone you’ve yet to meet.
And you know, I get it.
Love is good. Vital, probably. And love isn’t just the best part of life, it’s probably the singular aspect that gives life any value at all.
So, in all actuality, it makes a lot of sense when people say things like:
“Don’t be mad. Don’t be angry. Don’t be resentful and don’t be jealous. Live your life from an effortless place of love and nothing else. Because that’s actually what living is.”
And then they blast you in the face with sunflower emojis and beaded bracelets or something.
But here’s an unfortunate fact:
That shit is not real.
It’s pretty, and it’s empowering, and it’s usually helpful. But ironically, all of those things are the exact reason it’s not real.
Life is not always pretty, life is not always empowering, and not everything life throws at you is going to be helpful.
So telling someone to feel only love is so far from being helpful that it practically ensures they’re set for failure. Because what is the person supposed to do when they’re faced with a situation in which love is not the inherent trait?
What happens when a 4-year boy watches his father drunkenly beat the fucking shit out of his mother over and over and over?
What happens when a kid watches as his younger brother is taken into a (literal) closet and raped at an age so young that neither of them even understand it’s wrong?
What happens when a kid sees his abusive, alcoholic father be taken by cancer only to be left wondering if he is or isn’t sad?
What happens when that kid realizes the only reason he wasn’t raped was because he thought it was some silly prank (“I’m not falling for it, you’re gonna pee in my butt”) that he wouldn’t play along with?
What happens when that same kid tries to recall his pop’s voice a few months later, can’t remember the sound of it, and then realizes that he is, in fact, kinda sad?
What happens when that kid watches his sexually abused brother eventually hit puberty, realize what happened to him as a child, and slip into a serious and ongoing bout of drug addiction and self-mutilation?
What happens when that kid realizes his brother was raped solely because he himself lucked out and didn’t partake?
What happens when that kid watches his abused and broken mother (with her own addictions) try to balance being tragically fucked up herself while still trying to raise her sons, resulting in a spastic and intermittent mix of maternal love and malicious anger?
What happens when that kid, now a man, finds the girl he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with in bed with another guy?
And what happens when that hits him so goddamn hard that all the broken pieces he’d been left with come crashing down in such a way that he slips into a multi-year battle with a chronic eating disorder?
What happens then?
Are you just gonna look that kid in the eye and tell him:
“Yo, lil homie. Don’t be sad. Don’t be mad. Don’t be resentful. Just love yourself. Shit ain’t too bad.”
No.
You aren’t gonna say shit.
And you aren’t gonna say shit because suddenly the fairytale has been replaced with a barren, nasty reality — it’s been replaced with real life.
Sometimes you are going to hurt. Sometimes you are going to be sad. Sometimes shit is gonna come crashing down and split you to your motherfucking core.
And when that happens, when you’re looking down at the shattered pieces you’re told is your life, what do you do?
That’s a good fucking question.
What exactly is one to do when they’ve got their face thrust so deep in the fire that everything they see is suddenly tinted red?
I don’t know.
But I’ll tell you what that kid did.
That kid took a look at his life.
He saw the way everyone in his life tried to cope with their pain through alcohol, drug abuse, or whatever else. And then he saw how he had tried to do the same via his own outlet.
He saw the literal fucking hell that these people’s lives had cascaded into simply because they refused to confront the most disgusting side of themselves. And then he looked inside of himself and found his own perverse demons smiling back at him.
And when he saw all of these things, the thing that sprang up out of him wasn’t a thought of love, it was the horrifying realization that, if he didn’t take control of his life, if he didn’t fight back, the tragedy surrounding him would come to define him too.
So out of desperation, he owned his pain, his struggle, and every fiber of dysfunction that had been festering in his gut. He quit running. And then he stared out into the dark pit in which his demons had been hiding.
Suddenly, from the abyss that had been so dark for so long, a light sprang. And it was that very light that began to stitch him back together at his broken places. Threading them together with something he didn’t know he had.
Slowly his fractured places became strong, and his pain became his strength. While they remained tender, they had now lit a fire he hadn’t had previously, and they were the exact thing that he began to build his foundation upon.
And unlike a broken piece of pottery thought to be forever ruined, he looked up to see the shattered pieces of himself put back together. Still broken, still hurt, but whole.
Then something special happened.
It was then, only then, only after claiming province over the nastiest spectrum of his being, that he was able to truly see the other side.
He found that as much as he hurt, he was able to feel equally as good. As sad as he had ever been, he found the ability to be that happy too.
It was his sadness that finally allowed him to feel joy. It was his hurt that allowed him to finally find peace. And it was only after walking hand in hand with his pain through hell itself that he began to understand the value of love.
Because as dark as things may seem, they can be equally as bright too. Maybe not initially, but eventually. And not always, but sometimes.
You are going to be sad, you are going to be happy, you are going to be hot, you are going to be cold, you are going to laugh, and you are going to cry.
Sometimes you will feel everything in the absolute worst way. Other times you will feel everything in the very best way possible. And, every now and then, you won’t feel much of anything at all.
But here’s the thing: ups make the lows worth it and the lows are the exact reason the highs carry any real value at all.
None of these emotions are everlasting, and it’s only by possessing the opposite that an emotion is able to draw its power. So, in the same vein, here is my final sentiment:
Love is not inherent.
And thank god for that.
Because when it does come, when you walk into it with truly open eyes, you’ll feel exactly how I felt, you’ll feel how love is supposed to feel.
Not eternal, but still overwhelming.
And oh my god is it worth the wait.
By Nick Sorrell.
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