Letting Love Win

Love is the child of an endless war
Love is an open wound still raw
Love is a shameless banner unfurled
Love’s an explosion,
Love is the fire of the world
Love is a violent star
A tide of destruction
Love is an angry scar
A violation, a mutilation, capitulation

Love is annihilation.

–“Inside” (Sting & Police)

I wrote a blog a few years ago on love and what it means to me. I began by saying that romantic love is merely a form of love, and went on to list a few of the other things that love means to me. I could list everything on that list (which has grown) but at the end of the day, it boils down to this:

Life is love.

When you can look past your prejudices, your materialistic values, the popular opinion, the selfish motives, the insecurities, you will see that life is love. Being able to breathe is reason enough to love life and be thankful but we take that for granted. We sometimes take ourselves for granted. Some of us hold ourselves too high and take the rest of the world granted. Some of us don’t even know that true love is so close that we go out looking for it in places it doesn’t exist. We are so afraid that we’ll go our whole life without finding “true” love that we step over the real love that’s around us.

“You wear your emotions on your whole shirt, not just the sleeve.” – How one of my good friends summed me up a few weeks ago.

I’m a hopeless romantic. The bottom line is that no matter how much it may hurt, and how vulnerable it makes me feel, I choose to let love win and it’s a big part of the foundation of who I am. Every decision I make is an end result of letting love win. Whether it’s a love of writing, love of laughter, love of friendship, love of books, love of being a dork, love of love, my life and heart revolve around letting love win.

At the end of the day, my love of life has me going forward every day, even if I feel like I can’t take any more disappointment, because tomorrow always comes.

Have I stumbled? Of course. Has my heart been broken? Naturally.

Do I regret any of my decisions?

Absolutely not.

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Inspired by this prompt from Laura:  Love is a gigantic word that’s definition and how we use it has evolved over time. There is family love, life partner love, BFF-always-and-forever love, and OMG-I-loooooovvvvveeeeee-that love. Tell me a love story about one version of “love”–what it represents, what it means, and how you use it (or don’t).