Some Words...

Some of you read my last post about my advice to my teenage niece who's thinking about having sex for the first time. Well, over the weekend she called me, crying. Seems she told her boyfriend that she wasn't ready, she didn't want to make a mistake, she wanted to feel loved - but not at the price he was asking her to pay. Smart kid. She actually listened to what I had to say, which kind of floors me since I never had the smarts to listen to my elders when I was her age. As we talked, I told her how proud of her I was. She asked me a really hard question though, one I'm not sure I answered correctly, or even could answer correctly. She asked me why love hurts, why it feels good at first, then changes so drastically. Here's what I told her:

Love is like pumping your blood full of an illegal substance, the kind that makes you euphoric and makes you feel invincible. It makes you want to wrap yourself in it and let it consume you. It wears off, because it's like any drug, it's affects are only temporary. I'm not saying that love isn't wonderful, it is. I just think it takes years and years of living, to find the 'real' kind of love. The kind that doesn't judge you when you fail, the kind that isn't demanding, the kind that forgives you your mistakes because of love, not in spite of it. The kind of love that sometimes may not engulf you in it's prettiness, but comes on subtly. She sounded confused. She asked me if I'd ever found this type of love. I had, or at least I thought I did, many many times. I told her how I'd spent the better part of thirty years searching for that someone that made my heart flutter. That someone I would go to sleep dreaming of, and wake up longing for. It's amazing how many someone's seemed to fill that role. I told her how they all missed one important element. They all failed to make me happy. I had promises of love, I had the "I think I'm falling in love with you" guys...and one day I woke up and realized that I had it all wrong. No one would ever make me happy, that was one job only I could fulfill. "Then how did you eventually find it, the real love," she asked. "I stopped searching," I replied. It's something that only a grown up can figure out, not that I'm insulting the wonderful power of being young, it's just that being young = being naive. One thing I've learned, you have to have the heartbreaks, the pain, the loneliness, because it's the only way you will ever realize that being loved, starts with yourself. "It sounds cheesey," she said. "It is," I replied. "It's also the single hardest thing you will ever do in your life." "The single most important too," she replied. I could only agree.