You tell me that humans are made to love and yet love does not come easily for us. In this world, where being soft is a liability. We have walls as tall as towers, rose vines creeping up to reach the sky. Our thorns protect us, that is what we have learned. Letting someone in has long been erased from our coding. We are terrified of the pain that lingers in the shadows of love. You tell me that humans are made to love but we have been taught to fear vulnerability.
As children, we sang of how love made the world go round, but as we grew taller we could see past the blurry goggles of childhood. We left the kingdom of innocence the first time we held our hearts in our hands, willing to part with them on our very first Valentine’s Day- only for some second grader to turn their noses up at our glitter-filled handmade card.
And you may laugh, but deep inside you know that that is where the seeds of rejection were first planted. And with every tear we shed over boys and girls who were undeserving of our glowing hearts, those planted seeds grew the vines that crept up the walls that were laid down, brick by brick, as we left adolescence with the thought in our heads: “My heart must remain here in my chest. My ribs are not a cage to keep me locked inside, but to keep pain from piercing and shattering my weary heart”.
You tell me that humans are made to love, but why is it then, that we write songs about love being a battlefield? If we are made to love, why is it such a struggle for us to hold out our hearts to the person we love and trust that they will care for our bruised hearts?
“You have to fight for what you love.”
“You have to fight for the person you love.”
It is an oxymoron, this fight for love. Love and peace are meant to be the opposites of war and fighting. We have forgotten our roots. We are the sunflowers who cannot see past their own tall stems, so close to the sun we have forgotten we are embedded in the ground.
We have forgotten how to simply just love. We have lost touch with those innocent children putting so much effort into those handwritten cards. Pouring love onto paper, with every sprinkle of glitter we could fit onto the page. We have put those feelings in a box and buried them deep within us so that we do not dare try to uncover them. We buried them under feelings of fear, rejection, and hurt.
You tell me that humans are made to love, and I don’t believe you. Maybe long ago, before the fear that looms around every corner of this world. Now, we fight for it. We have to fight ourselves for it. We fight all the learned behavior that has rewritten whatever coding of love and trust ever existed.
I wish we were made to love. I wish it was as simple as that. I wish that love came as easily as water flowing down a stream. I am tired of fighting myself for what I know I deserve. I am tired of being too scared to allow myself to love and love deeply.
Maybe it is for this reason that we wish children would never grow. So that they would never learn how to fear, and only know how to embrace glorious love.
