Sunday, 17 October 2010

• Who Do You Love More? Yourself, Or Me?

  
  

  Who do you love more? Yourself or me? It’s a fair question. Yes, I’ve asked it before. And as I keep getting older, I wonder if it’s not the most important question to be asked. I’ve only been in love twice in my life, three times if you count me being in love with myself. The first time was as a boy, and the second time as a man. Though I do of course think I meant it when I said it as a boy (I mean, I meant it as much as a boy can mean it), I’ve learned now that “love” has very different meanings as we grow up. The last time I used the word, was after I finally understood fully, what it meant when you actually spit it out.

  I Love You.

  Heavy words, right?

  I guess the problem was that just like with a loaded gun, it’s most dangerous when being miss-used. A gun can sit loaded in a closet and never harm a fly, but once placed into careless hands it can do much worse then even kill a person, it can ruin lives. Boys will use the word like a nice compliment, almost like, “Hey you have really nice teeth, oh and also... I love you.” 

  Think about the last two people, whom you said I love you to. Which person did you mean it more with? Was it the same both times? Of course not. If it was the exact same then how did you come to find the second person? If you feel like the more recent time is without a doubt for real, then what was the time before that?

  See it’s a mind fuck, this love stuff.

  So, now as a grown man I've finally realized what it means to say, “I love you.” Let me tell you how I got there though.

  My grandparents are married and have been for over 65 years, and my parents now for over 34 years. Neither one taught me about love. Thats because when you’re small, it’s hard to understand, even if you’re surrounded by it. You just don’t really understand what it all means. Love is what happens at the end of the movie in the cartoons, but talking animals are also involved in that, so it’s not too easy to grasp the whole concept. In the world of a young boys life, love goes like this… boys love their Moms, boys love baseball, boys love trucks, boys love their football teams and boys love their girlfriends. Nice and clean. Well, so now lets qleep ahead just a few years and I’ll tell you where I saw REAL love for the first time.

  I was sitting in the ICU, in the mountains of East Tennessee.

  Dramatic huh?

  But that’s where it happened. My good friend Chris had choked on a piece of chicken and it ripped a small quarter sized hole into his esophagus. He was dying. His lung collapsed, he had to have a blood transfusion, then another. He was not doing well at all. The one doctor onsite who would be able to fix this type of tear said that it was far too complicated for his own skill set, and that he was uncomfortable even attempting it, because he was sure it would kill my friend. I’ll save you the stress of the rest of this tale, no, he did not die. In fact I just spoke at his wedding this last weekend!

  What did happen though was that he spent well over 30 days in the ICU without health insurance, sitting, staring out of a small hospital window. Spending every waking moment, of every single day knowing that even something as simple, as say choking on spit would kill him. Fuck, a common house cold would have killed him. He was really hanging on by a thin hopeless thread. If he made it through he would be broke and have to start all over. If he didn’t make it, he would orphan a son and devastate a fiancé. Well he pulled through, and though he'd have a feeding tube in his belly for over three months, he has since recovered, and we had cupcakes at his wedding and ate hamburgers the night before.

  During this time I was at the hospital almost everyday. Watching his Fiancé and him taught me what “I love you” really means.

  She stayed by his side every single night. She washed his hair, she cared for his son, she gave him hope, and she caught his tears. She did not let him give up, she would not let him give up.

  Love, isn’t just liking the same movies or flavor of ice cream, it’s not just getting along well for years or both enjoying baseball. It’s a verb. An action to be preformed, It’s a not a simple feeling, it’s more a statement, like saying,

  “I will…”

  I thought about this everyday while sitting in that cold hopeless room, I thought, “this is what real love is.” It's what you’ll do for someone without having a guarantee.

  She didn’t know if he’d live or die, if he’d go bankrupt or be attached to a feeding tube forever. She didn’t know if he’d choke in the middle of the night, or even swallow normal ever again. She didn’t care. She loved him. When she said "I love you" it was a promise. What it really meant was, “I’ll love you.”

  There is a movie called “Good Will Hunting” which explains this idea better then I can. I thought about this one part from that movie, over and over again. As I sat there and listened to the hum from the muted TV, and the beeping of the machines filling up his room. I remembered this speech in the movie about love…

  Sean to Will: “I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself”

  I love you,

  Or

  I’ll love you,

  Which one do you have?

  Which one do you want?

  Daryl- WJNTY

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