We talk about love in this world as if it should come freely.
You love your parents, your wife, your child, the world around you. That's what we are told, anyway.
You see it on the glossy magazines and thrown around the Internet carelessly as if it is something we should do casually, easily, and it should come naturally.
But do we really love?
Most of the people I've seen claiming to love, respect, and move with peace are some of the most vicious people with deep hate in their hearts.
That's not a slam dunk, only what I've observed over time.
In a world of fear, hate, anger; to truly love -- it's one of the biggest risks and rebellious acts you can truly take.
Don't believe me?
If you're chatting to someone right now, turn around and tell them that you love them.
Not easy is it? The mind whirls with the social implications of this, and the burden you pass onto who you are talking to.
That's why I say love is a risk.
To love someone so completely and wholly that they could peer into your soul and you would be safe in knowing that they would only want to nurture it rather than harm it in any way.
This is love in it's truest form.
I first found this kind of love when I was 28.
By 28 I was a broken man by then. I had been tossed around, passed from person to person, the people that I had trusted almost always harmed me or left me.
I was a young 28, not an old soul. Not one of those people that sit and watch the world as if they know it inside out -- I was young, reckless, full of energy, enjoyment, and care-free.
By then I was now learning to hold my trust closer than a mother holds her child for the first few moments. My trust and love had been torn; wrecked by those that I chose to give it to.
The world doesn't teach with love; it teaches through pain.
This is how we learn to love -- through pain.
Pain teaches us; it moulds us, it sculpts us -- each pain point a kiss for the future you pass on to yourself.
Of course there is familial love; the type of love a father has for his son, when he watches him from afar and lets him stumble because he knows the lessons that will teach him in the future.
A child is a part of you. It's a small piece of you that grows into an entirely new human being -- why wouldn't you love that which was once you?
But loving someone else that isn't of blood?
That truly is a risk of the highest order -- to trust that even in sickness and in health they will have your best interests at heart.
I had always seen pain as something the world burdens me with before I met my wife -- that it was somehow the unseen strands of the world punishing me.
I never quite understood why the universe punished me so, and not other people -- everyone seemed so happy and content around me; they had partners, they had family, joy was in their hearts..
But me?
Nothing. Loneliness and emptiness.
I didn't think I was a bad person either -- I saw good in the world, and I saw good in people, but the world punishes me harshly for believing in something better.
I gave freely, and the world taketh -- so I stopped.
But that all changed when I met my wife.
She's an old soul, my wife. If I could describe our relationship then I would say I'm always dancing too close to the flame, dancing with the flame, cusping the flame, enjoying the bright tendrils of fire that comes out of the flame -- and she's there pulling me back from it so I don't get set ablaze.
It was hard to trust again, it really was.
Especially when everyone else had shown me in my life that love isn't worth it.
But my wife, she proved me wrong -- she taught me that love just wasn't the good feels and the sitting with each other and bearing your souls together
It's also sheltering her from the rain when I'm fuming mad with her. It's listening to her when she's upset when I have a million and one things to do, but making the time to just sit there with her.
She taught me this; that love is about showing up for your partner no matter the cost, and I'll admit, this is something that I had never learned from anyone before.
No-one had taught me that -- this was something new for me. Beforehand when I loved it abandoned, ran away, got scared, left me.
But my wife showed me that no matter anything, she'll always be there for me, even if she wants to saw my head off at that moment in time.
And that's the truest form of love.
Raw, unfiltered, passionate, forgiving, and heated.
I wouldn't be the man I am today without my wife, and that's something worth writing about.
