Redefining Love

by Anna Erickson

I thought love meant sacrifice. Those you would give up the most for. Let go of your old habits for. Even, surrender yourself to die for. Believing that love was somewhat of a gift, either you’re giving it or receiving it. But what I discovered that night was something different. It came to be one of the most memorable nights of my life and, not because it was the night I told you “I love you,” but because that night you taught me what love was. 

A starry backdrop revealed a parked Jeep, fondly familiar. Two hours in, I sat beside only you and our own unrestrained tears, confessing everything I’d give up just to have you in my life. I told you I’d remain in my purest form, in efforts to preserve and obtain your genuine love. I told you I would give up my dark areas—which gave spark my life—to have you in it: leaving you as my fire. I promised that you meant so much to me that I’d let go of all of my grey areas because you were worth more then my fucked up regularities.

In that moment, it was like holding up my glowing heart, peeling away all its devilish pleasures, and desperately hoping you’d see the potential it had, hoping you'd see the sacrifice, and hoping for your love. Tears on tears, now. Honesty and vulnerability thrilled the air, my heart screamed “please, please, please,” whispering “just please love me back.”

Then suddenly, you lifted your own tear stained face, grabbing my hand as I reached to wipe my own tears, looked into my eyes: steady now, and said: “I don’t want you to give anything up for me. I can't have you giving up any parts of yourself just for us—putting up a image for me. I don’t want that at all. Because I need love. And I don’t want to fall in love with an image of you—I want to fall in love with you.”

A wave of shock. You see, no one had ever told me this so blatantly before. I recognized, as I took handfuls of myself away trying to provide fuel for our love, I dumped myself in a hopeless abyss as I couldn’t have kept the fire lasting forever, no one can.

It’s such a youthful desire, almost natural, to do everything right in order to enrich love. Like when you're conditioned with “make mommy proud,” a phrase dropped so easily from mature lips onto young minds. But giving up yourself to be the most perfect person you could be for someone else, therefore earning their love, isn’t true love.

Instead, love is giving up the strive of personal alteration; being imperfect in front of partner, and allowing yourself to be in your realest form and living your fullest life, therefore inspiring their love. Only then can the love be natural. Winding and growing as true love does. Love is emotional, full of fire and passion. I want to be able to be real. Of all the fake things in the world, my love won’t be one of them. Love will set your soul on fire, I long for a love like that: fiery, passionate, and real.