Live, Laugh, Recognize

Back in university, one of my friends dated this asshole who mostly just wanted to take advantage of her. I remember sitting at a communal table on the third floor of the York University library (where it was so quiet you could hear the anxiety and student debt ruining the lives of kids in their early 20’s) as she told me all about her troubles and her heavy heart.

She was falling in love with him (as we all stupidly do) and when she told this asshole how she felt, he replied by saying he “appreciates her”. Lazy, coward, stupid, fuck-face (I’m very overprotective of my friends. Don’t fuck with ’em).

“Hmmm… appreciate?” I replied. “Let’s look this up on Thesaurus.com.” Because that’s what English Majors do?!

adore
be crazy about

enjoy

fall for

.

.

.

Recognize?

“Awww… He recognizes you!”

Like a ticking bomb, we burst out laughing to a point where we have to get escorted out of the library with our stuff slipping out of our hands, because we can’t stop giggling at how RIDICULOUS it sounded when I said it out loud.

Truth is, him telling her he “appreciates” her sounded just as dumb!

It’s been nearly a decade, and this has become our inside joke. We never say I love you anymore, it’s always “I recognize you so much” and somehow it feels more pleasant, nostalgic and way more special than saying “I love you”.

So clearly LOVE is what I want to talk about today. Let’s begin with a list of things that I LOVE:

I love sushi

I love sunshine and the warm weather

I LOVE my birthday

I LOVE ice-cream cake

I love traveling, and I love Shakespeare, and I LOVE my Netflix shows, and I love my new apartment, and I LOVE naps, and I love gin and tonics, and I LOVE this new book that I’m reading.

Was that so hard? Why is it so easy to confess our love for literally everything and ANYONE, except the person we’re romantically involved with or in a relationship with?

Why are we putting so much pressure on a single word? How are we so comfortable talking around it using words and phrases that mean the same thing:

“I care about you”

“Make sure you get enough sleep”

“I think you’re pretty cool”

“I’m proud of you”

“you are everything I ever wanted and needed, beyond my own knowledge and understanding. Quirks and traits I never consciously desired but I am now obsessed with and cannot live without”

Sorry that last one got a bit specific… but you see my point here.

Does love mean different things to different people? Has this blog turned into a bunch of rhetorical questions? Maybe.

Maybe I love you the way I love a diet coke on a hot summer day! Doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Doesn’t mean if a nice, cold diet Pepsi comes along that I won’t think about it. Doesn’t mean I always want a cold beverage! Oh unless you’re a gin and tonic with extra lime and fresh mint. Then I wanna marry you.

You know who is a better writer than I am? Sheryl Strayed. One of my friends whom I absolutely LOVE to death bought me her book and it has inspired my writing and changed my life. Here’s Sheryl’s advice on saying “I love you” from her book called “Tiny Beautiful Things” because I’ve never heard anyone articulate this more beautifully than she has:

“Love can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor, and loaded by promises and commitments that we may or may not want to keep. A proclamation of love is not inherently ‘loaded with promises and commitments that are highly fragile and easily broken’. The terms you agree to in any given relationship are connected to, but not defined by, whether you’ve said ‘I love you’ or not. “I love you” can mean I think you’re groovy and beautiful but I’m in a transition right now, so let’s go easy on the promises and take it as it comes.The point is you get to say. You get to define the terms of your life. Do it. Doing so will free your relationship from the tense tangle that withholding weaves. Do you realize that your refusal to utter the word “love” to your lover has created a force field all its own? Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted. It makes the people from whom things are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel. So release yourself from that. Be brave, be authentic. Practice saying the word “love” to the people you love, so when it matters the most to say it, you will.”

Wow. She clearly got her degree from a better university than I did. Take a moment to let that sink in. I’ve read this passage dozens of times and I get chills every time!

There’s probably nothing I can say about love that hasn’t been talked about over the last thousands of years. I’m 3 days away from turning 30 years old, and I’m reflecting back on all of my relationships and what I think love means to me.

I think life is complicated, scary and confusing enough. I think we need to take it a tad easier and stop putting pressure on things that are beautiful and make us feel great! I think I agree with Sheryl. I think it’s time for us to take control and define things by our own terms because “the best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love”.