Brey Willows

Card 60, Writing Down the Bones: Tell your story of love.

(This is supposed to be a fifty minute writing prompt. I do not have fifty minutes of time to write on anything other than a book.)

Love is a beautifully complicated thing. Rom Coms will make you think it’s easy. That it all slots into place and even if you get grumpy with one another, you make up by tea time.

But love is messy. Your parents love you but can give you lots and lots of baggage to carry with you throughout life. Baggage you drag into other love relationships. You can love your siblings but not like them very much.

You can love pets more than partners, and be sadder when you lose a pet than a partner.

You can love someone, and then not love them anymore. Where does that love go? It gets beaten down with a hammer, I think. The hammer of opinions, of selfishness, of boredom.

You can grow to love friends, and want to be there for them in ways you might not want to be there for family or partners. That kind of love can last your whole life, and they might be the ones holding your hand as you leave this mortal coil.

I’ve fallen out of love like falling out of a treehouse and landing on your back, breathless and with a new outlook on what’s important. I’ve hurt people. People have hurt me. All in the game of love.

Love is something different when you’re twenty than when you’re fifty. Love when you’re young is fractious and huge, loud and sweaty. It’s rampant and dramatic. More often than not, it’s also fleeting.

Love, now, when I’m approaching half a century?

That’s love built in stone. That’s no-matter-what, we’ll-get-through-it-together love. It’s open conversations about change, about needs, about desire. It’s continued dreams and plans to make those dreams come true. It’s safety and a place of quiet in the storm. It’s honest and reaching out, as well as looking inward to make sure I’m being the best version of myself for her.

Love is what’s going to get us through whatever changes the world continues to throw at us. That’s all of us; hold on to the people you love. We’ll get through this together.