Love is not something that has graced my doorstep with any frequency. It's oft been little more than a passing warm wind, a smile alighted in my lips quite brief.
I never had a parents love.
I was blessed with abundant love from siblings for a time. It, too, was brief and ended yet I am still quite grateful for the time that it was.
My greatest love, my most enduring and unwavering, has involved my two children. Through the tumultuous teen years and two year old tantrums, love was ever there, ever strong.
I had the unprecedented love from a grandmother that filled, overflowed the typical. My grandmother loved me more than a mother ever could. Even upon her death, even as the years have passed, my grandmother's love remains like a silent sentinel, a forever warm embrace.
There have been three friends with whom I have felt great love and intimate friendship. These have been my anchors that pulled me through dark, troubled waters and lighten my burdens, my depression and heavy lack of self-esteem.
Relationships, ah, they have proven to be nothing but tragic in one way or another. I seem to attract monsters reminiscent of my parents, abusers with inflated egos and manipulation strongly at hand. For the most part, anyway.
Love has been nothing but a poor man's dream of a rich man's table scraps. It's not something I seek as it feels like ashes and looks like decay. I don't know that I even believe that love between two healthy adults is something real, to be touched and felt and to survive longer than a few months, maybe a year. No, having not personally experienced it, I am unsure if it truly is real.
Maybe it's because I see photos of "happy" couples yet their eyes, body postures and words betray them. I see no "happy" but lots of settling, denial and unwillingness to call a dead horse, dead.
I didn't come to this world to experience relationship love. Thus I seek not what is not meant to be.
I am not bitter as I'm unclear if such a thing can even exist.
Love is a stranger
