Love is really heavy

Hey, it's Valentine's Day! The day that is more saccharine than Halloween with all its trick-or-treat bags.

Anyway, what better day to write a blog that I've been trying to write for months. You see, I have this thing with love. The word and what it represents hold a tremendous amount of weight for me. It kind of plays into my literal versus imaginative mind, I think.

When I was a kid, the word "love" just wasn't a thing for my family. I really don't recall "I love you"s being said. I'm not trying to call this out as a bad thing. It's simply the way it was.

When I first met the family of one of my best friends back when we were in high school, I was like, "Whoooooa" with all the hugging and kissing and "I love you"s flying about. It wasn't just her parents with the kids, it was between all the siblings, too. This blew my mind.

Shawn's family is the same way. Every phone call, even between Shawn and his brother, ends in "I love you". I'm always like, "This. Is. So. Bizarre." You may even say it is outside my comfort zone.

One of my things with love is that I don't recognize blood translating into love. I do not think that because you share some genetic code you automatically love each other. For example, I have all kinds of cousins, big Catholic families, most of whom I've only met once or twice, and some not at all. They are my first cousins, but, essentially, some may say they are acquaintances, if not strangers.

Even relatives I do know, that I'd seen quite often growing up and in my adulthood before moving out of state, are not people I would say I love to. Does this mean I do not care about them on some level? No. It's just that love is too strong, too powerful for me to say if my gut doesn't tell me to.

What becomes difficult is someone telling me they love me and my feeling a tremendous awkwardness because I cannot say it back. I'm not snubbing that person, I just can't lie about it. It is the worst position to be in. I'm really not intending to be an asshole, but I imagine it could come across that way. I feel like texting and Facebooking and whatever else-ing that use emojis help me out because, for whatever reason, I'm okay with sending a heart. That probably sounds like some odd distinction, but somehow the heart, to me, is not the same as an "I love you".

While we're at it with the hot mess that is the workings of my mind, I do not acknowledge unconditional love as a thing. Nope, I have conditions. The conditions are that you are not a horrible person. If I've loved you and you turn into an unrepentant, horrible person, I'm pretty sure you are breaking one of my rules about love and I will have no problem with putting the kibosh on the whole love thing. I have conditions. I don't care if you are family or friend.

Last year I had a fight with a person who had been close to me. This fight took place after we were already not speaking for a couple years. She made a comment that even with all of the shit of the last couple years, she loved me unconditionally. Whoa, Nelly! NOPE! I told her not to dare to say that. I told her that if she had felt that way she would have, despite how things were going, reached out knowing that in the last few years I was going through the worst times of my entire life. She told me that's not how it works. So, to me, what good is the love she claimed she still had for me? It seems she had some conditions.

So, there you have it. When I told my therapist I thought this made me a cold hearted asshole, she didn't seem to think the same way. I'm going to try to go with her on this one.