Of Lovers and Condemnation of Character

Steel yourself for the day when you decide to explain open and honestly what led you to make certain decisions, or what travails may have led you astray at a certain period in your life. Judgment and accusation come far too easy to us as humans, and to ignore their presence would be to allow for their continual erosion of ourselves and our relationships.

We react in defensive frustration when we feel misunderstood, often finding ourselves lingering precariously over a trap of hypocrisy where we admonish our lovers for judging us, while we in turn adjudicate them for their seeming incompetence and inability to accept our love and see us as we see ourselves.

Lingering over coffees with our friends, we philosophize about the fundamental truths in this life - and since love undoubtedly has much more appeal than topics such as death or war, we focus our lives and our hopes on being able to find that extra-ordinary passion and emotion which will bind us with someone who has learned and lived enough to fully open their heart to us.

And alone in moments of silent reflection, we pray that we are of strong enough spirit and faith to open our hearts to our own selves in order that we may come to know and understand that as long as we continue to give open and honestly, without falseness of heart, then we are living the lives we were meant to - and no one has a right to condemn us for it.

Marching forward; always being pushed to take the next step in this life, when love demands that we stop and dig deeper into the moment, leaves frenzy and discontent and confusion all around. Leading a life of forced delineation in a world where pragmatism triumphs daily over wonderment and bounty of spirit hasn't lessened our need for one another - it has only made it more difficult to fulfill.

We label others to suit our needs and loathe ourselves for doing so. We demand trust, honesty, and unconditional love and then hate our lovers for not being perfect and become angry with ourselves for not being able to accept someone for whom we care so deeply.

We question our motivations and ask for time and patience and understanding from others but we are incapable of giving it in return. We pretend that we know what it means to truly listen to someone's life story by putting aside the filter of our own life experiences, because that is what we would hope they would do for us, but our hubris and sense of righteousness too often gets in the way.

Our pride gets hurt because we loved more, gave more, and hurt more.

There are the moments when life tries to push you forward before you are ready and you feel a pang of bitterness or anger at feeling you have somehow been betrayed or used. But you force those emotions to be replaced with others more benign when you repeat to yourself how you decided to love: with abandon.

You remind yourself that you both struggled, and you recall how hurt you were when you felt unjustly accused and judged, or told that certain events in your life didn't equate in importance to those of similar substance in other people's lives. Those feelings, though legitimate in their own right, leave you no room to now make any condemnations of your own.

You remember instead what it meant to feel like you were about to delve into a clear, never-ending pool of exploration and how important it was to believe that your feelings were being reciprocated. The heady realization that, for the first time in your life, you were capable of letting someone all the way into your heart left you breathless.

You've never underestimated your strength, your capacity for affection, or your ability to laugh until your stomach hurts and everyone else around you is left smiling…you just happened to lose sight of it for a moment.

These strengths and weaknesses - your "you" is what will be, in the end, your saving grace. It is what will help you to rise above, move forward, shed your fear, and, now that you have learned how to do it, continue to bare your heart. The acute sense of loss will remain until your soul gains back its strength, but your lover will remain both blameless for, and oblivious to, the tightness in your chest.

You fought for what you believed, you submitted to the heavy weight of sorrow, and you felt ashamed to grieve as forcefully as you did. But now you realize that you are still whole, and your inability to make someone see the force of love between two people is no reflection on you or your character.

Instead you realize that the love that you need stems from trust, and it wouldn't force you to constantly question or reevaluate yourself because of the latent insecurities left undiscussed between the two of you. You want a love that is as strong as your own and that doesn't back down in the face of adversity.

You want to strive for a love that was as good as were the of best times…and that is where you will force yourself to go whenever an unexpected pinprick of memory exposes the rawness of your heart and you are tempted to deflect the hurt by raising your defenses. And the next time you decide to explain open and honestly what led you to make certain decisions, you will do so without faltering, because you know exactly what it can lead to.