Sometimes the beauty of life is the love we find, or maybe the fact that we lose that love so often we become numb to every other sensation. It’s as if the world has created a feeling to prevent us from becoming so powerful that it can no longer keep us at bay. Nature has trapped us in a primal realm by withholding the ability to think about ourselves in a wholly selfish manner. There is a reason, a scratch on the record that keeps us in time with the rest of the universe, and it is not those who overcome this obstacle that persevere through the ages, but rather the people who accept the challenge and make it out alive with the object of their undying affections. Shakespeare, Picasso, Mozart, they all made it out. None of them without blemishes, and some on their own, but each and every artist recognized their truest love, and today we can submerge ourselves into their works because of the pure passion that they evoke. We search for that one thing our entire lives, and in today’s impatient society, most people settle for what they think is their passion because it pays the bills, but there is that inspiring action, person, or object that we all crave the moment we first recognize it as the source of our love. That feeling is what nature has tricked us into believing that we need on our most basic levels.
I’ve only ever seen it a few times in all my twenty years of existence. My great-grandfather, Loyd, died when I was only two years old, but I remember how sad my grandmother remained ten years after. She lit up when she met Earl; he made her feel young and restless and in absolute love again. He promised her that he’d stay with her for the rest of his life, a promise few keep nowadays, but he stuck with her until the very end, when he passed one evening laying by my grandmother’s side. I know it was love and not just companionship because there is happiness with my grandmother even now, years later. Their love remains. While they drink their coffee, my mother and father sit and watch us open our presents each Christmas morning. Every year it’s the exact same cups, the exact same chairs, and the exact same expressions, but they never seem to tire of it. At this time each year, they exchange a singular look, usually when all four of us are opening a gift in unison, and the smiles on their lips and the crinkles by their eyes make me believe that they are truly happy. Through it all, their love persists. My love is something different though; it is transitioning, blossoming from a simple feeling into a way of life. I wake up every morning craving the affections of my dear, dreaming of the time when we won’t be bound by distance, but rather free to enjoy the company of one another without resistance of any kind. My love, well, it fights. We fight. We defy the norm and have held onto that initial feeling, and because we push against the current, my love will conquer all the evils set forth to harm or break it. My love will survive.
The complexity of life and the struggle for love are not lost on me, even in my young age. I have seen it perfected and I have seen it broken by the very things that we are faced with every day of our lives. The way to make it out alive, and with your one true love, be it art or music or a boy you met in a deli, is to not travel through these trials and tribulations alone, but to stay strong and accept the weaknesses you may find in yourself or others, to be able to stand in the rain and enjoy the world that created us so many years ago, the same world that could take us away at any moment. Standing strong with someone is a much more difficult action than leaving, but I’ve stood in the same spot now for what seems like forever, and I can tell you that there is no other place in all of this extensive world that I would rather be. I am with my love. He is the passion that I carry everywhere I go and the place that I return to when I get lost. I am content to the very core of my being because I am loved, and that it is the truest form of life’s beauty.
Lulling Behind 