As a boy I thought love was an over-sweet combination of adoration and lust, something fueled by grand displays of a heart moved into action by the purest of all human emotion. I thought love was television romance; a perpetual, unwavering infatuation that consumed every waking minute. I thought love was defining and engrossing and debilitating and irresistible.
But I’ve grown up (or like to think I have) and realized that love of the manufactured sort – the kind boxed and wrapped and sold at $19.99 – is impossible to maintain. It’s not that you can’t show a part of your love with gifts and romantic gestures. It’s that love isn’t artificial. It can’t be built and shipped and cleverly displayed on store shelves.
Love isn’t a bouquet of long stemmed roses.
Love is a concerned wife sitting for hours in a hospital waiting room, doing her best to put on a brave face while her husband lies behind several sets of double doors marked, “Medical Staff Only.”
Love isn’t generic Jared® cushion cut diamond ring #349512.
Love is a woman who tolerates large buckets of bubbling brew in various corners of her otherwise impeccably decorated house because she knows that it makes you happy.
Love isn’t a hastily scribbled love note inside a hastily picked out greeting card.
Love is a woman who goes out of her way to share a commute, just so you have an extra half hour together in a life of increasing responsibility and decreasing free time.
Love isn’t one fated day in the middle of February.
Love is waking up every morning to beautiful brown eyes that remind you that the sickness and the stress and the depression and the pain are all temporary. Love is those extra few seconds after a normal hug would have ended; the time where she holds you to just reassure you that she’s there and will always be. Love is being with a person who inspires and motivates you, who transforms you into the person you have always wanted to be. Love is reciprocation.
Love isn’t being forced to prove something, or anything.
Love is knowing it’s already there.
I love you Tiffany. Thanks for putting up with my insanity, and actually believing there’s something behind it.
Nice piece Oliver. Happy to see some truly beautiful words spoken on such a ‘generic’ holiday. And at least you had Foreigner in your head. I kept hearing that damned Haddaway song… “Baby don’t hurt me,…”
::Rhythmic head bob::
Leave it to you to sum it all up so beautifully. Cheers!
Thanks Ed! Cheers!
Aw, I liked this one a lot! I completely agree with you on the matter. I especially liked “Love is a woman who goes out of her way to share a commute, just so you have an extra half hour together in a life of increasing responsibility and decreasing free time.” because my partner and I are experiencing that phenomenon right now. Where did all the time go? Why are there so many things on this to-do list? 🙂
Our to-do list is startlingly long and complicated sometimes. Hopefully that’ll smooth out when we’re both done with grad school 🙂 Enjoy time with your SO; the rest of the stuff can wait.
Sounds like you’re a lucky guy.
Lucky would be an understatement 🙂
What an adorable picture! Happy Valentines Day to you both 🙂
Thanks! Our wedding photographer was a wizard.
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
ORT-ORT-ORT-ORT!!!!—Jonathan
My ideas exactly! ORT-ORT-ORT-ORT (The Seal of Approval)!!!
Haha, thank you! What does ORT stand for?
Noooo…. you are making the rest of us look bad! 😉
I might have something in my eye…..
Yea, pretty dusty in here…