My First Love
When in intermediate school, I remember being egged on by all my peers to kiss the boy I was “dating” (more or less talking on the phone with) at the time because that was the big deal. I was not about to let this challenge go. I planted a big ‘ol juicy kiss on that boy because of the provocation of my peers and that’s what I thought people did when they were dating and in love. I really doubt whether I knew what love really meant back when we still sat in lines at the lunch table or played outside on a playground infested with dirt for recess. Although, I really doubt I knew for a very long time.
Musical Love
In January of my sophomore year, I remember going to my first concert: Styx. Best live performance I had ever seen (although, I could only compare it to the school bands leading up to high school and the high school band). It was an experience I thought I’d never forget, for everyone remembers their very first of anything, like plane rides or roller coasters.
Losing a Loved One
Not more than 24 hours after my first concert, I witnessed another first of something; I witnessed the first dramatic death in my family. The concert memory was quickly overshadowed by the aneurysm my father had the following night. Quickly, memories began to change. I found out about the accident when I awoke Monday morning, although cops and ambulances were at my house all night. I was much too tired the night before to wake up. I rode up to the hospital where his still body lay, not yet finalized as gone, but still choking on the air of the respirator. The scene left the most melancholy taste in my mouth, and I sucked on it for two days. Two whole days until they pronounced him brain dead. Two whole days for me to ponder whether it would be better for him to be paralyzed the rest of his life, or for him to enjoy his Father in heaven. Thankfully, I wasn’t the one choosing.
Painful Love
Later in the year, I lost my brother to the universal pandemic of drugs. Although he did not die, it felt as though he did. There was nothing in him that was “him” anymore, nothing that reminded me of the little boy I beat up when he made me mad or yelled at to get mom when he gave me the stupid idea to ride my bike with roller skates which resulted in me breaking my arm. (I still hold a slight grudge). Unfortunately, I began to feel extremely detached from the rest of the world, for two people I cared dearly about, even if it didn’t always feel like it, were gone.
Missing Love
The detachment, I later realized, stemmed from the fact that I didn’t have the spirit of my father to wake up to every morning or the love that reverberated from his smile, nor did I have my brother to pretend not to care about me, yet not let me out of the house in shorts in the summer. That’s when I realized intermediate school crushes, middle school dances or high school dates weren’t what love really was about. Those were just fairy tales waiting to have a happy ending (let’s face it though, nobody knows how to ride a white steed when they’re eleven). Love is waking up on Christmas morning and opening presents with your family while listening to cheesy music. Love is when there’s a family dinner, and someone ends up hysterical about another’s belch. Love appears when you scraped your knee when you were little and one of your parents was there to place a bandage on the open wound you could “see the bone” through.
My Definition of Love
I only preach this sermon of love because, since the ever annoying Valentine’s Day falls right around the corner, it seems people are falling more in and out of love than what generally seems psychologically acceptable. Don’t read my idea of love in the wrong light, for I know people our age can be in love (hello, high school sweethearts), but for some it just seems like another excuse to be hip to hip and lip to lip to another individual. The definition of love has nothing to do with whether you have the ability to go on a few dates, or whether you’ve been “talking” for six months. Love attaches you to the rest of the world through that one single person who keeps reiterating the feeling. Love, as I like to see it, is an emotion that remains strong even when that person isn’t with you anymore.
