Love & Law

INTRODUCTION

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” - C.S. Lewis

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It wasn’t the span of a few months that made me fall for him so quickly, but the vulnerable moments during that time. It was those 12 hour nights spent just talking. It was the mental connection. Who knew such a dull action, as in doing nothing, could be one of the most liberating moments. Our nights were spent conversing about everything and nothing: politics, history, abortion, marriage, education, law... you name it, we talked about it. I guess it was the company that made the most boring situation the most fun.

But how was it that I woke up every morning wishing he was next to me, and went to bed every evening wishing I was sleeping next to him? Why was it that I missed him more and more every day, and yet we had only known each other for a short amount of time? Was time irrelevant? How could you want someone that you never even had? How was it that I had seemed to give away my heart without even realizing it? What a stupid, stupid girl.

And so came the ultimate question that despite our up and down relations, I kept coming back to: What is love? And what do we really want in terms of love? Do we want sex? Passion? Attention? Friendship? We say we want love, but we don’t define it. We expect it to define us, and then when we actually find it, more often than not it is not what we expected. We have been programmed to think that love is a fairy tale—a handsome boy sees a beautiful girl and gets her by saving the damsel in distress, and a girl sees a handsome boy and gets swept off her feet by a prince charming. So superficial, was it not? There had to be more to love than that.

Maybe we hold on to that definition of love because we are scared to not only see more of the person whom we quote ‘love’, but we are afraid to give more of who we are. If we show our true selves, we are being vulnerable. We constantly ask the question, “What if they don’t like the real us?” And that, right there, was the reason why love caused pain and heartache. It was because love is meant to be real, raw and beautiful. Once we see a person as they really are, and let someone see us as we really are, it becomes a type of real love. But can we give in to ourselves to let someone see us? Can we actually let someone get to know us; let us into our heart enough to see all of it at the risk of being judged, vulnerable or disliked? Love is to each person’s interpretation, and I have seen and experienced enough relations to not believe in love. Not the way it has been defined by society anyway. There were a few things I did believe in: I believed in lovers. I believed in best friends. I believed in intimacy and I believed in a connection. But it wasn’t until I met Elliot James that I finally believed in love.