Love.
It’s a word that gets thrown around like a week old wet towel. We pretend so often in our lives that we are truly, indeed in love but more often than not it’s a messy mirage in a desert of loneliness. In thousands of years few have truly gotten it right.
Think of the greatest tales of love. Many were about power and control. Even my grandparent’s generation made a mess out of love, staying together through the bullshit because “that’s what people do”. My parents generation are the divorce generation; they made divorce popular.
Now, in this modern time of Tinder, Netflix and Chill, and fuckboys, we find ourselves lost in search of the true meaning of l-o-v-e.
We know we want it because when we have even a sliver it feels as good as anything can. That magic spell is cast and we turn into entirely different people trying to make sure the spell never fades.
For me, it hasn’t. A few years ago I was a boy who met a girl, dancing in his living room and experiencing the quintessence of love. Today, I walk into that very living room to see a ghost in my t-shirt that she wears like a dress, waiting for me to pick her up off of her feet.
I don’t believe ghosts to be supernatural, but rather conjuring of emotions. A person doesn’t have to be gone forever to grieve that loss. Love, in its truest form, of any kind is the supernatural emotion we try and fail to explain.
So let me give it a try.
Love is endurance. Love is haunted. Love is joy and pain. Love is connection. Even if you loose the person you love, living in the memories is more satisfying than moving on. It’s not a conscious decision; you just can’t give anyone else what you’ve already given away. God, the theory of everything, some other entity we have yet to explain; whoever made love only gave us the capacity to love one other completely.
If you told someone you loved them and moved on to be happier with someone else then you haven’t experienced what I’m talking about … I hope you’re about to though. Because to really be in love is to never let your feet touch the floor again.
That’s why I embrace the ghost in my living room and I dance with her every night.
