The fairytale
I was talking to a friend, who had gone through a rough break up earlier in the year. She said something interesting to me, something I’d not considered before.
It’s good for me to hear you talk about Clay. Not just the good things, but when you tell me that you’ve had a hard time, or when you guys are frustrated with each other. That you don’t break, you both always bend.
In ten years, we’ve been through as much as two people can go through, together. One thing remains constant:
We.
Love comes unexpectedly, quietly. It comes despite your intentions to find it or to chase it away. It dispels the destructive lie of the fairytale. It is impossibly imperfect. It fucks up your vision of your charming prince on the white horse. You get your prince, but he rides forward on a nasty old mare with a ratty tail. Your prince may take your hand, gentle and strong, but his hair is all wrong and he smells like the mare he rode in on. He may gracefully dismount that horse and tell you that you are the most lovely creature he has set eyes upon, all while silently farting.
Love doesn’t replace reality. Love simply makes reality a little more bearable. Or less, depending on the day.
Love is never based on need and always based on want. That want should burn, slow and even like an ember. It will not come to you unless, somewhere in your soul, you believe you deserve it. If you do not hold that essential truth, all of the love you attract will ring false. You will wonder why the shine always wears off. Find the deserving you, nurture it. That is the one and only perfect love, because it will attract your match as dust motes to a beam of sun.
Love is wearing your worst old sweat pants while doing chores and not caring how you look. Love is dirty dishes, squeezing toothpaste from the middle of the tube, putting the toilet paper on backwards. It is falling into bed, exhausted and filthy and safe. It is falling asleep with another person in the bed and for the first time, sleeping without fear. Love is knowing that sex isn’t always great, isn’t always frequent, but also isn’t a chore. Love scrubs toilets, prepares meals that take hours and doing so after your partner’s snoring has kept you up all night.
It is knowing, that you aren’t always right, but that you always strive to be true. When you fail at that, you suck it up, say you’re sorry, mean it and do better next time. It is granting forgiveness before it is asked for. It is never promising to not hurt the other, because you will. Again and again, intentionally, unintentionally. But, it is trying, with your best intention and integrity to not do so. It is accepting that you too, will hurt. You will get hurt. You will drop your grudge, your shield, your weapons and grant the same forgiveness you seek.
Love is forgetting.
Forgetting old wounds, old wars and being present. It is stepping forward in each moment, it is restful. It is manic. It is all screwy. But it remains. It connects, not to your head and not to your heart. Both of those entities lie in their own way, for their own reasons. It connects with your gut, settles in tandem with your intuition.
It holds you in your weakness and leaves you breathless. It changes you and changes them and yet solidifies what is integral in each. It is sometimes underwhelming, while being utterly remarkable. It is the soul, finding what it can cling to, what gives not purpose, but reward.
Love is a reward. It is the only trophy that is more work to maintain than it is to win.
It is fundamental, but it is never what we think it will be.
It is always more.
July 25th, 2010 at 7:40 am
hey lady, you mind if i repost this on my blog?
July 25th, 2010 at 7:41 am
with credit to you, of course! (i hope that was assumed!)
July 25th, 2010 at 8:13 am
Damnit…I contracted around myself (because I lost that love), but…damnit, again, this is so beautiful. Your descriptives are without equal. Well done, madam
July 25th, 2010 at 8:25 am
This was beautiful.
July 25th, 2010 at 9:47 am
This is wonderful. I love the image of the ratty old mare. So, so true.
July 25th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Yes.
Yes. Yes. yes.
July 25th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Ugh, so true about the maintenance.
July 25th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
And therein lies the truth. I swear it took me forever to learn this base thinking when it came to love, but once I did…All I can say is Paul and I just celebrated our 7th year together and I know there is an endless more to go. Beautifully written as always sweet friend. (Hugs)Indigo
P.S. I read the part about the knight on the white horse to Paul. He laughed and said so she’s met my twin.
July 25th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Love is you, and this blog full of beautiful words, strung together like precious pearls.
(And that is why I am not a great writer. But you kick ass.)
July 25th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
This was lovely. A little hard for me to read right at the moment, but still, lovely and something I’m going to bookmark for future reference.
Your writing kicks ass, lady.
July 25th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
this is lovely – and oh, so true
July 26th, 2010 at 6:13 am
Love is competing with yourself to be your best, not competing with your partner.
Love is giving away more than you think you can and still having everything you need.
Love is appreciating without a twinge of resentment that his farts are silent, even though your own never, ever are.
July 26th, 2010 at 7:22 am
Love this, way better than the one in the bible.
July 26th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Words to live by.
July 26th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Hmmm. I needed to read this right now. I’m busy thinking of the things i need to add, like communicating without shitty undercurrents (At which i am a master.)
July 26th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Beautiful. Thank you for writing.
July 26th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
yes!
July 26th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
i think this is radical. i have this same thing with my husband of eight years
and i write about the good and bad as bold and honest as i can be on my blog.
so glad to read this this evening.
July 27th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Yes. This. Exactly.
July 27th, 2010 at 10:17 am
I needed this today. Thank you.
July 27th, 2010 at 11:14 am
I want that. And I’m so glad you have it.
July 27th, 2010 at 11:15 am
“It is the only trophy that it is more work to maintain than it is to win.”
What a sentence. I hope someday to find myself in this place. You have made me think and wonder…
July 27th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Oh my beautiful girl, again, your writing amazes me. Your truth, honesty and ability to put into words what so few of us have been lucky enough to find is astonishing. Brian and I will be celebrating 20 years together this year (16 married) and not a day goes by that I don’t struggle to express EXACTLY what you’ve written. To him, to anyone that asks how we’ve done it and how we maintain it. I’ve dragged my husband through hell and back, several times throughout our relationship and yet he’s always still standing there in the end. Burnt, soaking in tears, drowning in anger, shaking his head in frustration, yet arms wide open, reeling me back in from the abyss. It took me a REALLY long time to understand how important it was to love myself as you described. It truly is the beginning and the end of happiness. You are absolutely phenomenal Christine!!!
July 27th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
This? Pretty much the best thing I’ve ever read.
July 27th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Love this. So much.
July 28th, 2010 at 8:43 am
See this is all true, all of it. But the thing I’m still learning is that even knowing all of it doesn’t save you from having to learn it all over again. Just when I think I’ve got it all wired–oh yeah, we’re solid, that won’t be *us*–fuckit, something new happens and we start all over again.
July 28th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
My god, I needed to read this today. Thank you. I’m at the point where I’m trying to decide if my husband and I ought to remain together, and your post reminded me that there truly can be beauty in the small, menial details of living with the one you love. Perfection.
July 28th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
This is absolutely beautiful. I want to re-post too (with credit and a link, naturally).
July 28th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Mmm. So true.
July 28th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
That’s some good stuff right there. Slurp.
July 29th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
You’re so eloquent. And here, I’m thinking love is dishes and laundry done nicely and repetitively without being asked.
July 30th, 2010 at 6:42 am
oh yes!
July 31st, 2010 at 1:44 am
Yes. Exactly.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:58 am
Jeez, this is beautiful. And this….”It is the only trophy that is more work to maintain than it is to win.”…is so true. You put that perfectly.
August 1st, 2010 at 9:48 pm
I realize more and more how few people even know what they’re looking for when they chase love. So often, it’s the “not being alone” that overshadows any idea of what the real thing feels like.
Then, 40 years later, they either get divorced (as my parents did) or live in quiet tension (as my best friend’s parents do).
Let’s just pass out this post in the halls of every middle school in the land, ‘k?
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:39 am
Yep.
Teenagers don’t get this, and that is perhaps why so many of us made such awful mistakes in the name of love as teenagers and young women. I wish we could teach this to the young women- perhaps I mean I wish I could teach it to myself at that age. Sigh.
I’m really glad I’ve found that kind of love now, and realize it, and really glad that you have, too.
August 5th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
I lvoed this also. Could i use it on Good Housekeeping or link it? andrea.paventi@gmail.com
August 6th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Love.
August 8th, 2010 at 6:22 am
I need to read that over and over until it sinks in- gives me hope. Thanks!
August 9th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Absolutely fabulous.
And absolutely true.
August 9th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
yes. i am always glad to hear the good and the bad, because i think our society has not helped us to realize the truth of what it takes to really love someone