Re-Gifting Love

I am constantly trying to tackle this topic of love. It's spoken about and written about. Mulled over and dug up. I'm just taking another stab at the heart. I still have crazy mixed emotions about all this. I don't believe it yet. It needs more people....B

There was a time in life where we loved blindly. Without bias. Without boundaries. We were children and we loved with the same energy used when we ran for our lives, not thinking of calories or getting tired. We just went for it. Kind of like skipping. You look like a moron when you do it as an adult, but as a kid, man, did you skip to your loo like crazy. Then someone told you that grown ups looked stupid when they skipped and you stopped. The same thing happens with love. You go through your early years loving without concern for feelings until someone makes you feel stupid, hurts those feelings and you put up the first brick. The brick turned to a wall, which eventually built a moat, and maybe now you've even got a dragon living in there. All to protect yourself. Well, yes, it keeps you in there, safe, blocking you from the evils of love, but it also keeps others from getting to you. Others who might, if given the chance, remind you of what it feels like to love without boundaries.

I have been through a lot, I have my own demons as we all do, but one thing I've always done is love hard. It may take a minute, it may take years, but once that love is there, I don't take it lightly. I don't say it unless I mean it a thousand percent. A friend once got mad at me because I wouldn't tell him I loved him. We'd only been friends for a short amount of time-six months or so. I liked him yes, but in the grand scheme of life, I didn't know him enough to love him. But he knew that when I said it, years later, just how much it meant. I may even thoughtlessly say I love you to my best friends and family when ending phone conversations, but they know me enough to know that when those three words exit my mouth, it's with the confidence and assurance of the most trusted emotion humans feel.

See, loving someone and having them love you in return is an amazing gift we're given. That alone would have you throwing the L-word around like a baseball, but because of those who take that gift and abuse it, we create this boundaried love. And that isn't love at all. Instead it's this weird jumble of feelings that are constantly confusing, constantly judging, constantly sensitive and unsure. We fight for something so far from love that it eventually becomes that same imitation of it, the same disguise that confirms our notion that love hurts or adds more gold to our treasure chest of mistrust.

I know some people take their time, think relationships through. I also know some people think too much while good people pass them by. And then I know me: I know that I have my own issues and fears. But I know that without a doubt, I love without boundaries and having that in me still, after every and anything, is definitely a gift worth rewrapping and giving to someone else.

That bitch stole my heart,

xoxo

Blackie Collins