luv

He’d always wanted better words for what it felt like to live, and to suffer, and to love it all so recklessly as to hate how it couldn’t love you back the same.

Love was always tied to and obfuscated by obligation.

I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and

I was furious with myself for literally birthing into existence a love so strong it could wreck my life.

Underneath fear and his instinct to escape, my father experienced, he told me, a rush of love for my mother that made him feel ill, lost to the depths of a new knowledge: that love and fear got all tangled up,

your father made me laugh until my cheeks prickled with heat and the last shadows of the trees were pointing long toward the horizon.

Those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. However, this love often eludes us. And we spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply did not know what to do.

To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.

“the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”