Can love conquer all?

30 Nov

When I was little, I expected falling in love to happened in one swift, lovely motion.

Every fairy tale taught me that one day I’d get swept off my feet and know exactly who I love - potentially even upon first sight of them. They led me to believe that falling in love can solve every problem, and is possibly the strongest glue known to man; a powerful foundation that supports all else.

No one wants to tell a little girl that love isn’t that simple, or that it’s a gut wrenching, wondrous, complicated, nerve-wracking, magically heart-breaking ordeal that if we’re lucky, we get to experience.

So, when is it that we find this love that all the fairy tales talk about? The one that prevails all else, and at the end of the day – always wins?

Although there are moments where love like that can exist, for me, the love I’ve experienced can be better described as moments in time that leave and always return. It’s something you have to work at, it’s malleable, buildable, inconsistent (as life is) and when it’s there, in the room with you – it’s everything. There’s a certain weight I feel when I can look into someone’s eyes and think, I love you.

Whether it’s my parents doing my laundry for me, my cat letting me pat them, a call from a friend, or the bottle shop clerk asking to see my ID. This is what I’d describe as ‘simple’ love, as I often take a lot of these things for granted.

Then there’s the type of love that makes me lose my mind, the devoted, borderline obsessive love that I’ve experienced. My adoration for One Direction (when they were still together), my love for chocolate, how a cup of coffee in the morning makes me feel, a song I repeat over and over and over until I can’t stand it anymore. I guess there are moments for different things, like deciding that I love the colour pink or deciding I didn’t love Swiss cheese. These small decisions can’t really be compared to confessing your undying love for someone.

I’ve doubted myself in the past about my intentions with love, because I always felt that my quick decisions on what I love was too instantaneous. I used to think this was a major flaw in my system and I probably should practice being more reserved. Being more reserved would mean I would be less susceptible to pain, but as much as I practice this - I can’t do it. I always give up and remind myself that life is short, and that I should tell people that I love them. I figured that I never wanted to regret not telling someone I love them.

I recently read Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn. She breaks up the book with separate interviews with other authors and asks questions that explore their perspectives on love. A chapter that I found extremely moving was an interview with British journalist Melanie Reid. In 2010, Melanie had experienced a horse-riding accident that left her tetraplegic and paralysed from the chest down. Within the interview, Melanie shared that she had given her husband permission, without any judgement, to leave her – that he hadn’t ‘signed up for this’ and she loved him and wanted to let him go. Yet, he said “Don’t be so bloody stupid. You’re stuck with me.” Melanie later shares that the love from her family, friends and strangers – who all shared immense compassion to her after the accident, made her realise that without love, that we are ‘an isolated person, a lump of cells’.

I guess my question would be, could the way I love overcome any hardship I face? The short answer I think is no, at least not completely. Although I am certain it is a very essential tool to get through life. Love is a strong, powerful force that even if we’re fortunate to experience, it’s never guaranteed. Even without being in a relationship per say, you can still find love in the small things. Personally, I love writing when it’s raining; I love freshly washed bed linen; I love the place I go when I read; I love making my friends laugh; I love when my cat greets me at the door; I love when I’m not late to work; I love having a favourite song, and it changing within two days’ time; I love the look in my dogs eyes when I pat her, and I love talking to the spiders in the shower, and kindly asking them to stay where they are for the five minutes that I’m in there.

Then there’s the love you feel from others. When the barista at work knows my coffee order because they’ve remembered; when a friend comes to me needing to rant; when I share an awkward moment with a stranger and we both laugh; when my Mum asks me what I want for dinner at eight in the morning; when someone looks at me and asks ‘are you okay?’ and then allows me to have a cry in their arms (I have terribly weak tear ducts); getting a text that shows someone thought of me, or was reminded of me. There’s a hundred more I could think of – and I’m sure you can too. Although love is made out to be complicated and tough, sometimes it’s as easy as holding the door open for a stranger.

With all the good feelings love brings, it can also bring a lot of pain. Don’t get me wrong, there are also a lot of things that I don’t like and do upset me. I’m never one-hundred percent happy all of the time, I mean who is? But I know that it will be okay because I know I’m surrounded by love, but only if I choose to let it in. I guess on the forefront, love is a word I can use to describe all this – but I’d say my ability to hope impacts me more than love does.

I’ll acknowledge that there are different types of love and I’m definitely no expert in the matter, but I find being in love is… treacherous, yet exhilaratingly profound. I understand that I’m only twenty-three and that there is so much out there for me to experience, but sometimes when I’m all alone, I think about the times I’ve experienced that different type of love, different from the laundry, the cat, the call and the bottle shop clerk.

There was a moment on a boat long ago, where I think I felt it – the look, and the weight of the room (or I guess the ocean). I’m not the biggest fan of boats, but I was comfortable on this one. I laughed, hard – and the coffee was dog awful, and it was freezing. Somehow with all the people around us, I felt that it was just the two of us there. I remember his laugh like it was yesterday.

It's moments like these that are painfully unforgettable, and after a while you realise that whether it was for better or not, a person has changed your life. A lot of different emotions can impact this: envy, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, shame, gratitude – but I’d decided that it was love that solidified that memory. Of course, with feeling love like this, heartbreak can follow all too easily. It’s something we all experience, a human right of passage. When you don’t get that text back, or they meet someone new, or things just don’t work out (although you prayed, they would). Heartbreak from someone you are in love with is unfair, but inevitable – saying that doesn’t make hurt any less. As Pat Benetar says, love is a battlefield, and holy hell was she right.

I wish I had advice on how to soothe a broken heart, but unfortunately the only thing that has worked for me is time. Whoever said that time heals was correct, as much as it sucks to acknowledge. I know alcohol will never help me!!! Maybe a shot with lots and lots of dancing with friends; ultimately crying it out works best for me and a feel-good movie with tub of ice-cream can definitely help speed the process along. If movies aren’t your thing, listening to doomed love songs like ‘Lover, you should’ve come over’ should do the trick. Of course, these life hacks only mainly work for romantic love. With more complex experiences of love, it can be situational, and I don’t think I’m equipped to give advice on those instances yet.

Without hope, I wouldn’t be able to pull myself and others out of moments of despair. I’ve learnt that life is full of lonely moments – I read something forever ago that said that we all die alone. Although incredibly confronting to think about, it made me realise that there needs to be a balance of self-understanding to equal out accepting and giving love to others. One doesn’t out-weigh the other, I find that it makes relationships stronger as you’re able to sit there and consider each other’s feelings with empathy and compassion, whilst also knowing what you deserve. In her book, Natasha spoke with philosopher and author, Alain de Botton to discuss the cliché of ‘loving yourself before you can love someone else’. A perspective that I’ve gained from this is when Alain spoke about putting the emphasis on self-understanding, instead of self-love.

“Acknowledging your brokenness, pain and insufficiency is a rather romantic thing to do…when it comes to self-love it’s not so much about loving yourself, but accepting that all human beings have their less impressive sides, and so your less impressive sides don’t cut you off from the possibility of having a good relationship… they don’t mean that you’re a terrible person who doesn’t deserve love. They just mean you are part of the human family.”

Reading this made me realise that instead of shoving self-love mantras down my own throat, that the work I really have to do is learn to accept myself for who I am. I know for a fact that there are parts of me that I would love to change, and that I don’t love everything about myself. I have to accept that at times, I am incredibly emotional and lack critical thinking, that I often act with passion and my heart instead of my mind. I also have to accept that knowing that doesn’t make me a terrible person, but it makes me human. It also supports the truth that we’re all going to make mistakes. My Grandad has always told me that ‘A life without mistakes is not a life lived’, I try to carry that with me as often as I can.

So, knowing what I know – I believe love can conquer as much as you let it. There is a lot of pain, hurt, and violence in the world, and hope and love are tools and virtues that we can use to get through our days. Love from the fairytales can exist, but I’m realising that life is filled with a lot more smaller confessions of love, and that too can be enough. From all my years so far, I can say that I’ve never regretted loving something or someone, because I’ve always learnt something from it at the end of the day, if not about other people – than about myself. Exploring my own ability to love has been exhausting, but when it’s there it feels so good. I can only hope that there is more love out there for me to discover, unpack, or even return to – and I’m very excited to experience that.

To those who know how I feel about them, and the ones that might not,

I love you!

Rachel.

Can love conquer all?

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