shorthand

Love, more than any other emotion, makes a person feel like she's on top of the world. But is love an emotion? If so, it would intangible, a thing unfit to be a noun. You can't hold love in your hand. At least, humanity has the conception that emotions are immaterial. But when I think of anger, sadness, heartbreak, love...I can feel them cupped in my hands, with all their definitive qualities. Sadness is heavy; heartbreak is watery eyes that see too much and are crusty at the lids. Anger is something fleeting, cat-like, but more like a kitten than an elderly maiden. Love is something else. Love gets into you, overtakes you, until you overtake everything else with your love.

Love for another is perhaps the strongest or most palpable form of love. A human is not an inanimate object that accepts and reflects love no matter the case. A human chooses to love you, or perhaps loves you so wildly that he looses all control and cannot choose anything except to know that he loves you. I will speak of love between men and women, because this is all I have experienced. That a man will take the time to speak to you, to court you, to kiss your forehead and stroke your hair when you are hurt, is a sign that you are loved. Many of us deny love or remain skeptical of it because of these signs. When they are gone, we reflect and believe ourselves to have sought worth from another's attention. Through this, we've lost worth through self. But having another love you isn't devaluing the love you have for yourself, but adding to it. Another's love a gift to yourself. It's a challenge to love in return.

I have never been loved by a man, and I have never loved a man. I've perhaps never had a relationship either, although I've been involved with a man (boy?). His simple affections gave me a feeling of joy and exhilaration previously unknown to me in such quantities. I had experienced the same through my love for nature--atop mountains and in dark copses of trees--but I had never felt such affection or attentions from a man.

Love. I can feel it. I've felt love from God and from nature (although they are one in the same). I've felt a degree of love from a man, although we were not in love with each other. Perhaps one of the gifts of humans is to show love even when we do not fully love each other. Perhaps one of humanity's gifts is that we are always in love.

I felt once, when I was younger, that I loved everything and hated nothing. I did not like anything, but love to varying degrees. This didn't lessen the power of love, but strengthened it because the love was everywhere and constant. I grew older, met a man, became involved, and fell out of love with love as I fell more in love with him. I forgot that perhaps I was allowed to love him, softly, not in the traditional sense acknowledged by society, but in a way that was a soft blip on a monitor but still palpable.

So let us say that I did love him, and do still love him because I once did. I measure that love in forehead kisses, in glances sent before orgasms, in afternoons naps curled around each other, in awkward silences, in hands stroking hair. I cup this love in my hands, aware that it is not full love or true love, but a watery form of what is still...love. Love, seen in affections straight from my heart. I gave bits of myself to him, and he to me. We gave each other love, although we were never in love.

Love makes you feel special. We deny it because there is the inevitable downfall. Time continues, and humans drift into different phases of love. Perhaps we never stop loving, although perhaps we were never in love in the first place. Perhaps the idea of being in love is merely a dream. Perhaps love is the only reality--love and the varying degrees we feel compelled to give.

Despite these levels of love, I still am unable to say, "I love you, _______." Because that means something different too. I have love for you. I have shown love to you. You have pulled love from me. I may even love you. But I do not, "I love you, _______." We haven't shown each other enough love for that yet.

And so this becomes an ode to literature, or rather language, and the power of words to explain what we feel.

Feeling. Emotion. And who is to say this emotion not palpable and real, simply because we can not see it cupped in our hands? I can feel it. I can feel the warmth of breath against my neck and soft kisses and fevered sex. I can feel love in my hands. It is real.

Is it ephemeral? Have I really lost my belief in love? Or am I finding it again, stronger than ever? (And why is it that I only believe in love when I am not with a man? But being in love with love makes me want love again, makes me want to find a man to whom I may give this love. Is that the true meaning of love? We all have love inside of us, and we find different channels for it? When I am with a man, my love is for him. When I drift from this man, I return to loving love, or words, or trees, or God. To giving all my love to them. For leaving love with memories of this man. What is love? Is love real? Why have we construed love to mean so many things? But I can feel it. I can feel love cupped in my palms. I decided once that love is God. I believe it again; I want it to be so. God is within us, and we give love to others while keeping it for ourselves. Love and God is universal. We take it and give it as we are able. Oh, I want for them to be the same, but oh how it requires thought. I can't feel it fully as I once did, when I knew they were the same. Why has the faith left me?)

I can feel love in my palms. Warm. Light. Like soft kisses and wind whispering through the trees.