On Love, Actually

I have had the pleasure to be inducted into a sorority, and to become friends with a member, because of that induction. And also because of that induction, I have become friends with her best friend. Over the last 6 months I have spent one day a week with these women. Talking, laughing, getting on each others nerves in a good way, and through them I have gotten to know the men that they spend their time with. Now the thing that makes this story interesting is that both of these men are exceptional. I mean they are good men, handsome, nice, and most important they are good, very good to my friends. And in turn, my friends are very, very good to them. But their relationships are built in two completely different ways. Each couple relates to each other in different ways, and they both work, and work well. But there are somethings that both possess that make them have the dynamic that makes the relationships admirable.

This has all been said to illustrate the reason why I was able to write this poem.

I cannot write about love when I'm in it. I just can't. I have loved a dozen times, I have only been IN love twice in my life. Both of those times I had the biggest writers block, or I was just so selfish with my emotion that I didn't want to share it with the world, the latter being the best explanation.

Now, when I'm not in love, I can write about wanting it. I have no problem with that. I can write about how I imagine it feels, or how it looks, or smells. I can write about having something better than I had before. I can be wishful, hopeful. This is no problem. I also had the horrible disposition of being a "love hater," a person so sick of seeing others in relationships that I never really wanted to know what their love looked like from the outside. I guess I just didn't want to witness what I didn't have.

But until I was around these two women, I did not know what that loved actually looked like, and seeing this makes me realize that I never had what I thought I had.

So I have had the idea of writing about this love that I see often, but I did not know how to voice it, how to put it in tangible words, how to let others read what I see.

Enter a third couple. And goodness, they are just as spectacular as the first two. This couple is actually so well suited for each other it's amazing they didn't meet in a sandbox somewhere. They have the same sense of humor, the same chill personality, and the same caring nature. That being said, it was something that he said to her that gave voice to the idea of this "young love" that I wanted to showcase. (Now I say "young" because I, like most, have the pleasure of being around couples who have been married for years, and even going to the weddings of friends, but I have never had the opportunity to be a witness to the meeting, arranging, and blossoming of couples until now) It was just 140 characters but it summed up what I had been seeing.

Now, I am in a place where other people's happiness, makes me happy. And I seek to be around people who genuinely love each other, I can ask their advice, I can get different perspectives on how they make things work because they are all so different, but work so well together. This is a super long poem explanation, but if one day I become a famous poet, and some senior in some college somewhere is doing a study on my work, I would have at least helped to answer the question, "what was her motivation?" My motivation is not love, or how to be in it, but being surrounded by those caught up in an emotion so strong, that their joy has rubbed off on me.