The beauty of love

I am so deeply in love at times that I feel like my body is swimming effortlessly in a clear blue lake and without warning I can be plucked from the water and thrown into quicksand feeling helpless and angry.

Sometimes I smile because I am reminded of one of the many things I love about another person or place. I smile as if there is a camera crew filming and the director will add a simple yet touching monologue over the shot. 

My love for some people has had me hunting down Stitch dolls, digging through clearance racks for cute tops, sitting for hours next to a hospital bed, moving across the country, finding a way to cover up an ugly tissue box with another box over that box, and crying in bed.

Love isn't always happy or exciting, at least for me. Sometimes love is hard and depressing and stressful. I want the people that I love to thrive in life but I can't force them to do so.

My love is my own. There are a few people that I have loved for decades and then there are those that come into my life and only stay a few years. Both types are special and meaningful. Regret is not something I can associate with love.

Love is in the moment. Love is beautiful when other people can see it and feel your adoration for another being in the air.

Everyone has written about love and they were all right no matter what they said(assuming it referred to healthy relationships). Maybe next week I won't feel the same way about love as I do today. My mood is stable but feelings they do as they please.

The beauty of love is that it cannot be understood. 

look away

There's an episode of Sex in the City where Carrie finds out that the divorced Charlotte still wears her engagement ring around her apartment. Carrie is shocked at this, and many viewers including myself at the time are as well. Who would want to wear a ring from a failed marriage?

But that's the problem with thinking. Failed is a harsh word to pair with marriage. Many marriages just don't work out but there are clearly very good memories for most marriages. An engagement ring is more than just a ring or a symbol of a marriage. A ring can be every happy moment just sitting on your hand. A ring can be a comfort on a drive home after a long day while feeling lonely. A ring can be a reminder to think of someone special.

Lately I've been missing wearing a ring. My hand feels naked. I look down and feel sad. My rings are safely in my jewelry box, I could at any time go put them back on but I feel like that would slow or reverse the healing and moving on process. My pinky finger moves to adjust rings that are no longer there. The indent my rings created on my finger are still there, faded but not quite gone.

I get it now. Charlotte needed the quiet reassurance once and awhile. Of course she ended up selling her ring and turning it into a down payment on Carrie's apartment but I wrote about that idea before.