I always read that quote about there being 3x Loves or three people we meet in our life and I always ponder, did the writer or the people that quote relates to really live in those loves so completely or did they barely live in those spaces at all.
The reason i consistently question this is because I myself have had many heartfelt connections, many times when a meeting of souls or minds happened. I have had or felt deeply about 8x loves over the last 30yrs.. And I say love, but factually they weren't all love.. they did teach me a whole lot about love though and for that I am grateful.
The first one, my first love, taught me that I could have feelings for another person outside of my tribe that were almost fathomless with the depth of them, this is the person who taught me about love, they also taught me how sometimes love can also bring pain and heartache.
The second love taught me that friendship is a large slice of the love equation, but not enough to sustain it.
The third love gave me the gift of learning about love in another human being, bringing life into this world and realising our hearts can exist outside our bodies. It taught me sometimes we can grow with someone and take different paths and love becomes not only different in want and need but it becomes Indifference also.
The fourth love taught me physicality does not equal feeling and sometimes love can pretend to be there and hold people in stasis, stuck together in habit rather than a connect because 'we should do what's right for the children' became a norm when really it was toxic and unhealthy for everyone. This love taught me you can chose your family, and you can chose your love and sometimes none of them are the same thing, and sometimes you are best off without them all no matter what we are taught in school or on the street.
The fifth love taught me sometimes we can break our own hearts when we walk away from what is right because we do not want to allow it time to unfold on its own so we believe it is wrong, it teaches us about patience and lost chances. And hope that we have learnt lessons and grown enough to never take anything like that for granted again.
The sixth love taught me that someone can give you a box of darkness, filled with their own rage and hate and violence and project that onto you until you learn the art of self worth and recognise you are the light and their shadow was never worthy of you then or holding onto any of it into the future. You learn that sometimes hate pretends to be love and fairytales are not real. Some loves do not look upon you as love, just something to stand on so they do not drown in their own filth and muck, not caring if you yourself drown. This love taught me that sometimes someone's self loathing and violence is in fact the very component on which you will build a platform from which you learn to fly.
The seventh love is the love I believed would be forever, when I had been stripped of everything and they had come in to help me rebuild, offering me the world. Offering me forever in what was bare because I had stripped it of all it was before. They offered me hope after the hopeless. This love taught me even well intentioned love cannot flourish when it is grounded in its own mire and its own past. It can if allowed, destroy you and your entire world you had just started rebuilding without meaning to, never realising the destruction left behind.
This love taught me like the phoenix you will rise from the ashes and you will begin again, slowly, but surely, you are stronger than you ever believed possible and after you have finally been stripped of all the emotional overflow of every other "love" you've ever gone through, this love will gift you a blank slate, a fresh perspective and timid but very strong heart.
Now for the last love. The eigth love. I don't know what this love is. This love is yet to come. There is hope for this love. But there is patience too. This is the last love, the one that won't settle for less love, the meet me in the middle, in the fire, as my equal love. And maybe I will meet this love soon or maybe never, and maybe this love is simply me on my own finally loving myself.
All I know is this eighth love? This last love? This one, this is the big love. The forever growing old on the Verandah love. And when I find it, it will last. If it had not been for the layers of love and other abominations already experienced then I would never have learnt what love means.
I want you to look back, on all your loves and be grateful for the lessons, because sometimes if we are to build a sustainable future of love what we need to learn is not what love is, but what love is not.
Mama, Madly xx
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