Logical Love

Love is a Choice

My folks have always said you get to choose love. I never really understood that until I got older. Disney doesn’t do well with helping us understand the nuances of something like love when in the stories it’s a touch, or a glance and the rest is a fairytale. Having siblings probably did more for helping me understand what my parents meant by choosing love.

“You have to love them but you don’t always have to like them”

That was a quote I learned to live by. I could get angry enough at my sister to be seriously contemplating selling her for gas money. You know like Joseph’s brothers did in the Bible. But if you so much as made her upset? You would quickly learn the wrath of a big sister with a bit of an angry streak. The only fights I ever got into at school came back to someone getting on the wrong side of my sister and me catching wind of it. Did I love her? Absolutely. Like her? She grew on me as we got older.

Marriage was a Promise

We learned in church that divorce was not something God liked. Now I have my own opinions on that but at the time it was how we were raised. Marriage was a thing that lasted. Till death do us part was a serious promise. I’ve always been one to value my word and consider how I say things. I don’t think folks who like to write can be anything else. I knew if marriage happened for me I intended to make it last.

Love was Hard

But it was more than that. My parents had told us that loving someone when they weren’t perfect was a choice. That sometimes love wasn’t easy. That sometimes it didn’t feel like love. That sometimes love was hard. I believed them. They have a phenomenal marriage. They had gone through my mom losing a younger sibling, parents dying, a suicidal kid, a gay kid, an unemployed kid, and everything in between. Yes, said kid was all me and no I did not set out to be the most difficult child in the world. They had kept it all together with a love I haven’t seen anywhere else.

I saw my friends ditch me when I went into my depressive spiral. I don’t blame them for that. How can I? I was a terrible friend and awful to be around. But I needed them and after years of being buddies, they decided that I was too much to handle. I don’t know if I would have done better if the situation had been reversed. I like to think I would have. But I don’t know. But I know that they had a choice and they didn’t make the one that said I was worth trying to save. Again I don’t blame them. Heck, at the time, I didn’t believe I was worth trying to save. But that has made me very conscious of my decisions regarding relationships with people.

Logical Choices

I can make logical decisions. I can put my emotions on the back burner and do what makes sense. I have always been able to do that. I know I can choose to love someone. And I could do it for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t be that difficult. But I want more. I want more than choosing. Do I know that there will be days that I have to choose? Yes. There will be times when that feeling just isn’t there. I know that. And maybe it’s just the Disney talking, but I want magic. Something a little more than a logical choice.

Does love like that exist? Can I have both?

Thanks for reading Y’all