An audio teaser of this post is directly below. If you would like to hear the entirety, as told in my own voice, the full audio is available for paid subscribers beyond the paywall at the end of this post.
What is love / Baby don’t hurt me, I’ve been hurt too many times before
by Maverick L. Malone
But I’m finding the definition changing
from what I was told, from what I was shown
from what I thought I’d always known
love is not some cheap, watered down version spoon-fed from a screen
it’s not a package of candy hearts and a dollar store greeting card
it’s not a Hollywood romcom
or a red construction paper valentine with X’s and O’s
it’s not a cartoon skunk with oversized heart eyes chasing an uninterested cat
love is the eighth wonder of the world
a stretched out sweater that still fits
a hard conversation
late night origami: sometimes it’s folding into yourself
and others it’s your face burrowed in another’s chest
soaking their t-shirt with tears
it’s running towards when every part of you wants to run away
it’s opening your eyes and softening to the pain
it’s a full wolf moon spectrum illumination
of the parts of your brain you shut down years ago
and buried alive six feet under in your body’s catacombs
it’s stop animation, rewind,
and a slow-mo reveal as the curtain rises
it’s an opening of Pandora’s box
with twelve Russian nesting dolls of yourself hiding inside
it’s a burning hot coal passed like hot potato
it’s a knowing, it’s a healing
it’s a salve and a song
it’s a rhyme and a reason that was there all along
love is a plant cutting
love is some parts of you shrinking while others expand
love is sucking the poison from your life
love is a lengthy text read twenty-five thousand times
love is driving through a snowstorm, blind
but above all -
love, the real honest to god kind?
the one making U-turns in the middle of the highway
the one that will never leave you behind
or high and dry at the scene of the crime
the one instantly hitting reply
the one in an endless supply
carrying you through every dark night?
that love?
that love can only reflect back to you if it originates from the inside
the beautiful lesson is a simple, powerful truth:
that by first loving me
is how I allowed the love from you
This morning I was contemplating love (and when I say love here, I mean it in a romantic sense) - what it means, how it’s changed, the realization that love is so much more than what we are taught.
Where do our ideas of love come from?
For me, sure they were modeled through my parents, but I was never privy to the behind-the-curtain moments so I suppose I never knew. I wasn’t there the many times I’m sure my father held my mother in her grief; for the softening of edges over time; for the pivotal moments when love began to deepen. I knew hand holding and hugs were love. I knew gentle, quick pecks on the lips were love. I knew acts of service and genuine care were love.
And then there was media. The fairy tales, movies, TV shows and power ballads that spoke of love like some savior, something found only outside oneself when we lament enough about it, wait long enough for it to find us, and it transforms into heart emojis, bedroom-eyed Romeos and over the top film dramas. From these idealistic notions of love, I knew it required desire. Desire required physical attraction. Physical attraction required beauty, often at such an impossible standard to which I - and majority of women - would never, could never attain. For someone who did not believe she possessed any such thing, my love went unrequited for years - most of all from myself.
When I think about the marriage that I left, love becomes elementary. Love as I knew it was nothing more than some Hollywood concept I was trying desperately to emulate.
Despite the part of me that continually felt empty and disconnected, I kept tasting that phrase, “I love you, too,” like a chocolate bunny, thinking the next time I bit in, I wouldn’t be met with something so hollow.
I wanted so much to feel the theatrics of film and the depth of epic Shakespearean sonnets that I stayed for fourteen years trying to convince myself that what I had was love.
And I think on some level it absolutely was, but it was not the love I yearned for, only the love I believed myself deserving of at the time, of where I was in my growth. The only way for me to experience the expansive love I still believed in was to choose my own, to put my needs and wants first for once and chase a dream, a vision for my life, a simple desire to feel, to know, to see on a deep level which I had never experienced before. I had not yet learned to fully open to myself and accept my own love, so I would never have found it in that marriage. I would have made myself sick if I had stayed, and in fact, towards the inevitable end of it, I did begin to get very, very sick.
Love was in its infancy back then, just as I. It was friendship, comradery, care; but it was not expansive, flourishing or thriving. It was as if that form of love was a plant that would never outgrow its pot.
It was beautiful for what it was, for existing in the way it did - though not without its challenges - but it would never know garden or earth or forest.
What I yearned for were roots that could stretch in every direction, stems that would sprout new shoots, even leaves that would change color and die off, making space for something new. My experiences have taught me that one cannot give what one does not have and thusly, cannot receive what one has not first created and felt within themselves; for even if it were to be given freely by another in the form desired, one would never recognize it for what it is.
I have said many times in my work, in many ways, that deciding to leave that marriage was the best thing I could have done for myself, freeing both him and I to one day welcome a richer, more meaningful and powerful love into our lives, an alchemical love. But first I had to cultivate mine. And so I went blindly into my own wilderness to see what was waiting for me and emerged a completely different person when I reached the other side.
Imagine living such radically different lives you feel as if you’ve been two people in a single body, in the same existence.
That’s exactly how it feels for me. One could argue with my legal name change that I quite literally am a completely different person, in every sense of the word.
Having now experienced what a moving and powerful love is, I find it baffling I went as long as I did without it, but such is ignorance: we don’t know what we don’t know. But therein lies the crux, the apex, the summit of one of life’s most profound questions, “What is the meaning of life?”
For me, it is rudimentary, 1+1, ABC: to know and be known; to love and be loved. The meaning of life is simply to live a life of meaning. And as such, love is the portal to that meaning. These days, love is more than kindness and caring, more than romantic sweet gestures and typical dictionary definitions. It is more than what was modeled to me. It is more than what I experienced in my past relationships. It is more than simply having someone to share a life with. It is more than brain chemicals, more than sex, more than even respect and human connection.
We can connect with many people: romantically, platonically, briefly or momentarily. But the kind of connection I always sought was something that would breathe and become its own living thing; that it would be like the seasons, shifting and changing and it would always keep us on our toes. To me, love means emotional safety, open and honest communication, unconditional acceptance and a high regard, support for and encouragement of authenticity. And it is because of those definitions that I feel passion so deeply, so profoundly.
Around age 19, I wrote in a journal, “If sex is the fire between two people, then emotional connection and attachment is the kindling that can keep it alive. I have a long way to go before I feel ready to wield that kind of power.”
It has taken me over a decade, but I have arrived at the threshold of that power, having integrated its difficult lessons that at times almost broke me. Only by experiencing what I didn’t want, could I ever awaken to what I truly desired - not only from another but from myself. That could have only happened within the marriage, leading to the very life-altering lesson that would propel me to seize my freedom and chase my own wonder. I now have such vigor and an insatiable appetite for life and love because I understand I am here to experience every visceral emotion and allow myself to change both within and because of them.
Had I not left that marriage, 90% of my work would not exist. I wrote a poetry book as I was making the decision to leave it. I healed through that book as I was coming out of it. I published that book once I had lived it. I started twelve others because of it. In chasing myself, I threw open the door to love. Since then, in removing any and all expectation for what love would bring next and unrolling the red carpet for my heart to experience itself, I have welcomed her with open arms and been blindsided by the type of connection that can only be described as the same doe-eyed kind I used to lose myself in, thinking it little more than imaginative fiction.
But it exists and I am living it simply because I granted myself permission to find it. Now I have become it. I feel grateful and blessed to live life as a writer and canonize my lessons, to map the coordinates of each one like a constellation and say, “This is what it looks like, but it may not always be in this same position. Fixed, yet mutable.”
I feel so much passion for immortalizing my experiences in words and find so much inspiration from self-awareness, realization, actualization. I think this is the most brilliant thing about the human experience, next to love: the discovery, the contemplation, the wonder; to be awed by the mere existence of your lover; to write emotion into song; to find such meaning and softness in the smallest things: their lingering scent on your pillow long after they have left; the smiles they’ve permanently etched into the corners of your mouth; the lessons they unknowingly impart. Even the difficult ones. Especially the difficult ones.
I think soul is an appropriate term here - not in the sense that this concept of “soul mates” exists in some textbook definition of one end all be all person we’re destined for (I think we have many soul mates in fact; many types we experience over time), but simply that soul finds true meaning in love.
Soul: the essence of us; the stardust we came from; the deep well of knowledge, truth, beauty and perspective that only wants to be expressed and experienced. Love is how we reach it, and real love, deep, profound, fluid and dynamic love, cannot come at the cost of soul, of authenticity, of self.
Love is not sacrificing any part of you or giving up who you are to reach her. Love is simply calling yourself home, only to find by complete surprise someone else waiting patiently, where one ending becomes a beautiful new beginning.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Junk Drawer to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.