Re-sharing today this Free Write that began with the prompt love – and applies to today’s #LoveBlog challenge prompt, vulnerability.

Free-writes are by nature personal and rambling.

Also, because my laptop is having issues, we’re going Avant Garde with punctuation. The question mark will be signified with /.

Enter at your own risk.

Of the 468 blogs currently on my website, the search term “love” brings up 233 results. Of those, 12 “headlines” include love in the title.  So, yeah, I’ve been known to talk about love.

To start with, there’s “WHAT ONE YOUNG MAN WITH DOWN SYNDROME WANTS YOU TO UNDERSTAND.” The story of how Marcus helped me through a tough conversation way back in 2014. Before he gave speeches, before we had book tours, #Truth. #TheAnswerIsLove

Parceling Love

At this moment, however, I’m feeling especially self-conscious on this whole love subject because I’ve become protective of giving love. Does that work/ Can you be protective of love/ Save love by parceling it, like money or energy/

Is love bottomless or does it have a limit

I don’t know. I used to think the capacity for love was endless, but now…there are people, situations, and experiences that charge me and some that drain me, and that ties in with the amount and honesty of the love I have within me to reflect.

Maybe partially because my love language is “acts of service,” how I feel loved, and often how I express love. and there’s only so much time and energy for service. Also, in part, because of my own social anxieties and the awkward introvert balancing act of exertion vs. fuel. Since I am also a “fixer,” I’m in a crisis of conscience there too, since I’ve recently been faced with more things, terrible word, too generic I know, but things – stuff – that I cannot fix. So I’ve been experiencing all the more helpless, hopeless, hapless reactions that troll on love.

**Important note** I’ve been socially harder to reach for almost a year now. (Feels like  only a  week or month, but truthfully…)

This is not a reflection on my friends, who are all awesome, but on my other life circumstances and this retaining wall that’s built up around my heart at the moment.

Not to mention the media and cultural atmosphere of hate promotion these days, it makes love feel like a reaction/action we should lock away in safety, hide in a special box behind the books in the library. I recently attended a “Lights for Liberty” event. (Again, opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any employer or organization for which I volunteer. And so on.)  There was talk of love there. Also, of course, anger, action, and voice. Does love have a place on the platform/ At least compassion/

I don’t know.

Oh dear. Did I mention this is a free-write/

Do we learn love

In another one of those 233 posts, I reflected on if love is an action-reaction we are born with or is it one we have to be taught/

Spoiler: I think it’s taught. And therefore, can also be learned, or unlearned, and has to be practiced as well. That blog is called, “Learning to Celebrate Love” and honestly, it’s a personal and fan-fav. I considered just reposting that because, honestly, it says a lot of the important stuff, also, I wouldn’t have to face the technical difficulties of this computer.

ANYway, this is a free-write…

I find comfort in this:

Photography by Jensen Sutta
And courtesy of Global Down Syndrome Foundation

I Believe Love Is

Love is personal and malleable. Love evolves. Love grows and retreats.

Can love teach us/ I believe, yes.

Can love break us/ maybe so.

Are we broken because of love, or because we were broken all along/

Can love heal us/ I think so.

I gather strength from the loves I trust. Mostly Marcus, of course, as his love fills me, pushes me, warms me, keeps me taking one step after another. I have never known a more honest love than the love he freely pours upon me. I want to deserve it.

I have a lot more to learn about love. About giving it, experiencing it, and channeling it. I’ve hit a stumbling block but am grateful to the universe for giving me the greatest teacher possible on the subject at hand.

This guy:

 

I’d love to hear what you think about learning and unlearning love? Comment on who teaches you?