A Generic History Of Love and Loss and Fear and Hope

You know what's wrong with you...You're chicken. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay, life's a fact.' People DO fall in love. People do belong to each other. Because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, yet you're terrified that somebody's gonna put you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in a cage and you built it yourself. And it's not bound on the east by Somali Land or on the west by Tulip, Texas. It's everywhere you go. Because no matter where you run, you're always going to end up running into yourself.
-Breakfast at Tiffany's

This is not a sad story.

When you were born, you were a clean slate. A perfect creature, with nothing but possibility on your shoulders. As you grew and changed, the world around you was changing too. The life that would be yours was being decided by broken hearted grown ups that loved you with each jagged piece. You didn’t know. You didn’t understand any of it. So you sang happily and when you learned to straighten your legs and coerce them into making you mobile, you went everywhere those little legs took you with your arms wide open and a light in your eyes. You loved everything you saw and every day was new. Do you remember that time? You don’t. You can’t. But you’ve seen the evidence in aged pictures and home movies. You know it was so.
As time passed, the framework for how you would view the world started to take shape, one event at a time. The first time you realized that you loved a place was the time you drove away from it in a moving van. The first time you realized you loved a thing was when it didn’t belong to you anymore, the first time you realized you loved a friend was the day after she moved away, and the first time you realized you loved a boy, was when you knew he couldn’t love you back. Nothing new here, just life, and so you close your arms just a little, but still move through the world generally unscathed. After all, that hope that was in you on the first day you took breath is still there, its been cultivated by the ones who loved you and worked hard to make sure that you knew it. As you continue to grow though, the changes get bigger, the gaps between you and the rest of the world seem more evident, the hurts heal slower and the scars run into each other. The questions come. You wonder if you’re doing “it” right. You meet people who walk through the world with their arms closed tightly to their chests, you wonder if they are less scarred. You rage against the notion. You go with what feels right inside, and you open your arms again deciding to let the chips fall where they may. You tell yourself, you can take it, you’ve come this far!

You are so naive. You are the fawn roaming unaware onto the freeway, you’ll never see it coming. You love some more. You love a lot. You are unafraid. You’ve built the sandcastle in such a way that when the waves come like you know they will, they can only take a little piece of it, the rest will still be there, and you’re always building. You’re working hard at loving all of it, and making yourself as deserving of their love as possible. You love places, people, things and circumstances. Your heart swells. You meet someone, who sees your scars and loves you still. You are on top of the world. The waves come, and take pieces of the castle, it is of no consequence.

And then one day...

The fawn looks up and is suddenly demolished. You never saw it coming, you are folded over with the loss that took you by surprise, the regret that laces the poison of it. You are undone. Every old scar is open, every forgotten pain made new, and you fold your arms tight to keep your insides from spilling out. They were right, you think. One more blow like that would be the end of you.

Time passes. You are resilliant, the love is still there, it brings you back slowly, but you are changed. There is a fear that dictates now, that keeps your heart in check. You know that whatever and whomever you love has the power to destroy you, and so you keep the world at arms length...at first.

Because this is not a sad story, I am happy to report that the fear grows quieter, and your scars start to fade. You are different, but you are not lost. You still believe and hope and choose to see. There is a tentativeness that was not there before, you are guarded, you tell yourself you are wiser. The reckless abandon has been replaced with cautious optimism, and a deep sense of responsibility to never cause what you are recovering from. You start off slowly letting yourself love a place, a group, a job, a hobby, ignoring the whispers of “what if”. Then without realizing it, in your efforts to protect the ones you love, you just love them all the more. In your attempts to grow and change you let a few more in, build another wing to that sandcastle. The fear is always there, you know it always will be, but then you look up at how the stars brighten the darkest of nights and you think to yourself that maybe, the presence of fear makes it all the more meaningful each time you find yourself willing to take the known risk.

“You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you.” Eve Ensler