What Love is Not

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If nothing else, the Covid-19 pandemic has given me more than enough time to think about a lot things.

Like how it’s so much harder to pinpoint and explain that moment in time when you finally fell out of love. It’s much easier to describe the when and the how and why you fell in it – but out – now that’s an entirely different story, and a tough one to tell at that.

Because all you can remember is what you wish you could forget.

Because to understand what love is, you also have to learn what love is not.

Falling in love can happen instantly, like a supernova that bursts inside you – this bright light that finds its way into all the hollow empty spaces rattling about within. Falling in love can also be a slow burn that smoulders and cracks like a bonfire ready to erupt into a fury of flames.

But falling out of love almost always takes time.

Falling out of love happens in inches and small steps that all add up to a long walk away.

Falling out of love is much less like falling, and more like stumbling and staggering. The ending of a relationship looks an awful lot like the end of a night of heavy drinking: everything becomes blurred and slurred and misunderstood, suddenly underlined by false-courage and brute honesty, and almost always, always, followed by regret.

And just like alcohol is full of false promises of comfort and relief, so too is love.

False promises that we make to ourselves.

That this person, or this place, or this thing, or this job will finally make us feel whole. That it will give us substance to replace all the stuffing and straw that we’ve filled ourselves with in a sad attempt at feeling complete.

That maybe this…maybe this will finally make us feel okay.

And that my friends is what love is not.

Love is not a substitute for dealing with your demons.

Love is not a distraction that gives reason to stop looking yourself in the eye.

Love is not just fresh straw and stuffing to replace the false fullness you have spent years and decades filling yourself with.

Love is being called out when your stuffing is showing.

Love is being reminded that you aren’t the only scarecrow out there.

Love is having the courage to admit when we act in ways that love is not.

Love is changing our behaviour – not in the hope of reciprocated love, but love is changing ourselves, for ourselves – and in turn, for the benefit of all mankind.

Our world is so small, and so divided, and so horribly stumbling out of love lately. Demonstrations of what love is not are everywhere, and I hope more people begin to understand that to demand love in the world we first need to begin with love within ourselves.

For ourselves.

Love is not hoping that others will change to fit your mangled form and opinions.

Love is not hoping that by agreeing to disagree we can happily carry on, still divided (my marriage was like that near the end. Trust me – it doesn’t work.)

Love, simply put, is not hope.

Love is doing.

Love is admitting.

Love is realizing we always have more to learn.

And then learning it.

Love is educating ourselves – about our differences and diversity, in our relationships, our homes, our workplaces and our entire world.

Love is understanding that those differences are what truly fill us up and make us whole; all separate pieces of a much larger, stunningly beautiful puzzle that yes will take time and work to put together – but what a masterpiece it will be.

Love is recognizing that the torment we hold within our hollow shells becomes amplified and infects and affects the entire world.

Love is not hoping for change.

Love is changing.

I truly hope we can mend this world’s big broken heart – but I also truly hope that we all begin to see that it starts by mending our own. I’ve been working at removing all the straw and nonsense that I’ve been carrying around inside me, and replacing it with knowledge, and patience, humility, empathy and forgiveness.

Forgiveness for myself, for others, and for this entire world that has stumbled so deeply out of love with itself.

xo SJ.

Artwork by Ben Zank.