Today is the day! My third bloggiversary! AND my...
RESURRECTION
BLOGFEST
III!
YES! Today, participants in this blogfest will BRING OUT THEIR DEAD!
But if you're ready for some reanimated blog posts, read on.
To celebrate my third year of blogging (!!!), I'm resurrecting my Valentine's Day post (published on 2/10/14), in which I wax poetic about "What love is." I was
going to bring back a post in which I bitched about crimes against grammar but reckoned that, as an author of romance dark and whimsical, I might be best served by accentuating that which is warm and fuzzy.
But if you'd rather read a rant,
thither thou goest. Anyway, hope you enjoy, and please do be sure to check out the other participants' resurrected posts (see linky list all the way down). The three qualifying bloggers who'll be selected at random to win either a $20 Amazon Gift Card OR my book and some book swag will be announced on Monday, November 10, 2014 (God willing). (
If you're just learning about this blogfest, it's not too late to sign up ~ you've got till 11:59pm on November 7 to do so and follow the rules to qualify!)
And now...onto the revivified post!
* * *
What love is...
In
a previous post, I bitched about how ruinous loving is. And it is.
But that's not
all it is.
In my late 30s, I began to draw parallels between romantic and paternal love. Not in an
Oedipus/
Electra kinda way, 'cause that's gross. The love my parents (who are not perfect people) show me and my sis, and even more, the love I feel for my son, is straightforward and manifests in obvious ways:
- Love looks out for you, as regards basic needs and comforts (food, rest, shelter, chocolate*).
- Love needs to see you well and happy.
- Love wants you to feel better ASAFP when you're not well, whether it's from physical, mental, or emotional trauma.
- Love shares with you, without conditions or expectations.
- Love laughs with you.
- Love does for you.
- Love accepts the feelings of anger, disappointment, and sadness you engender, but will always want to hold you close again (eventually; but the wait shouldn't be too long).
- Love waits for you to get your head out of your ass and apologize for whatever heinous fuckery you've perpetrated.
- Love understands that you may never apologize and forgives you anyway.
- Love may hurt you, but it'll want to fix that hurt, too, even when it doesn't understand WTF your problem is (see #2).
- Love wants to touch you (to the degrees appropriate to your relationship).
- Love wants you to want its touch (see parenthetical statement in #11).
- Love recognizes and respects that you are your own person.
But the critical factor of real Love: You don't have to work for it, you don't have to
earn it; it's just always there for you.
Always.
Now, in my early 40s, I feel that's what I should expect, when it comes to romantic love: obvious demonstrations of love that don't demand anything extraordinary of me, and a well of that same feeling within me for the other person, one that never runs dry.
And lots of exhausting, mind-annihilating, earth-shaking, God-revealing sex. Of course.
Maybe romantic love won't happen for me.
But I believe it happens.
Wishing you all Love, now and forever.
*
chocolate is totally a basic need.
* * *
Resurrection Blogfest III Participants!
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