In the Month of May

No one realizes that they don't know what love is. Everyone has an idea of it, supposedly, the ideas they have gotten from the books and the movies and the magazines, but those are all other people's ideas. In reality, we are all taking an idea from an idea of an idea when it comes to the idea of love. Yet, at the same time, we all have our own idea of it, how it is, how it should be, what it feels like.

Most people believe it is that moment of happiness, the moment when you actually feel alive when skin brushes skin and eyes meet in an accidental glance. Most people believe it is that perfect feeling, where your heart and mind agree and it is so momentuous that no one believes that it actually exists and that it's actually happening to them.

But no, love is that burning, empty feeling in your chest that you get when you see them walk away. Love is when you miss them even when your eyes are locked and your fingers intertwined, whispers clear as day being passed from lips only inches apart.

Love is when you realize that you will let them go, if only it makes them happy. Love is when you would do anything to see a smile grow on their lips, even it makes you hurt in the end.
I knew that's what it was now. I didn't know it then, but I realized that feeling I had when I walked away, not looking back for fear of never taking another step forward without you beside me, was love. It was the one thing I had been running away from.

While most people run to love, throw themselves into the deep end with it, I ran away, every time I felt myself getting near it. I always ran.

Your hands kept me steady and still though, like anchors on which to rest my heavy heart, I stayed next to you even though my instincts told me to run away as fast I could. The sound of your heartbeat against the rhythm of mine drowned out the screaming in the back of my mind to run.

I gave everything to you. Things that I didn't even know I posessed I laid in your hands with the utmost delicacy. You kept a loose grip around my fragile offerings at first, but then you clenched your fists and sent them crumbling through your fingers.

You taught me what love was. You taught how cruel it could be and how cruel it is. You taught me how to run, how to listen no matter how soft and perfect a heartbeat can sound next to mine. You taught me everything I know.

What most people think of as love is being willing to give everything, love is actually doing it.