What Is Love?

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” -Zora Neale Hurston

What is love?

Is it something tangible? Is it something that you can hold in your hands? Is it a person? Is it an experience? Is it fleeting?

These are the questions that pondered my mind on a regular basis; I’ve spent most of my life searching, chasing, and fumbling for its existence and its truth. As children, love showed up in the form of Disney movies with the damsel in distress continually being rescued by the prince and riding off into the sunset.

Love seemed inevitable if I were to go by those terms. All I had to do was wait.

So, I did.

But the prince never showed up, and my naïve heart was broken. I wondered how many of us, as children that morphed into idealized romantics as adults, waited with bated breath for our savior to appear and yet, were continually dejected and left feeling as if we were lied to and forgotten.

I knew that to find love, I would have to change my course of action. If the savior wouldn’t come find me, I would go find him and then, we would ride off into the sunset.

You know, happily ever after, and all that.

The men showed up or better yet, I went looking for them. High and low. Far and wide. I had an ideal image in my mind — strong, masculine, and domineering; the visuals of men from my childhood flashed through my subconscious.

I remembered the men my mother had chosen to love, and they were all domineering, controlling and often jealous.

That’s what love was, right?

Control. Jealousy. Aggressiveness.

I chose these men, and they, in exchange, left my soul battered and bruised.

I was often caged; the free spirit within me didn’t fit too well with a man who could not operate within his own insecurities. I was too loud. I was too needy. I was too smart. I was too much. The only solution to handle my wild wings were to shatter them from taking flight.

But that’s what love is, right?

Years of molding myself and dimming my once profound luminosity had me in a shell of my former self; I barely spoke my opinions, I dumbed myself down, I let go of my dreams…why have dreams when love from a man is all that you need?

That idealization seemed simple. It should have been enough.

It never was.

If love made me small, why be here at all?

What was the point of being born with my thoughts, my desires, my dreams, my voice, my body, and my whole being if it was to be broken, stomped out, and diminished by another person?

That’s not what love is, right?

In the middle of a mental breakdown, I chose another plan of action to find love: stay away from men.

HA!

Maybe, just maybe, if I were to become celibate — no sex, no closeness, no nothing from the opposite sex then love would find me.

I went days, and months without a man near me.

I sat and waited. I picked up new hobbies. I changed my wardrobe. I drastically cut off my hair and proclaimed myself as free. I wrote more. I stepped outside for the first time, battered wings and all, and tended to my wounds. I met new people. I danced in the moonlight and connected with my ancestors. I hugged trees, yes, you read that right, I hugged trees.

The months slipped into a year of not being close to a man, and the heaviness of finding love had slowly been lifted from the depths of my soul. The desire for love from another still existed — that longing would never go away but something else was found in its place…

Me.

The little girl who dreamed, chased and ran after life without hesitation. The little girl who laughed loudly, spoke her opinions boldly, and danced freely. She was taking form in my adult body. She was finding her place again within my heart space.

And as she connected deeper into the hiding place of my soul, it all clicked.

This is what love is.

A lifetime of searching, running, and often fumbling for the existence of love when all along, it was laying so silently within me….

There she was — waiting to be found, waiting to be remembered, waiting to be nourished and given a safe space to explore…

I created a womb of safety for her. I nourished her. I spoke loving affirmations to her. I went to the depths of my broken parts for her. I gave to her what had never been given to me.

This took time. This took months of deliberate action. There was no guideline or playbook I could follow. There was no right or wrong way for me to be. And, as my heart overrode my thoughts, I started to trust her again.

And then one night, alone in my bed, with my dreams dancing out in front of my mind, love crawled out from her hiding space and invited me in.

The love for her, for myself, for life itself overwhelmed me, and suddenly, all the pain, the doubt, the confusion, and the many disappointments that had followed me on my journey of finding love became clear.

I felt whole for the first time, and I held myself tightly as the essence of love danced within me.

That’s what love is, right?