I am at the age where it is my own responsibility to get myself places, to feed myself, cloth myself, and maintain myself. This may be in misalignment with many but I was only thirteen years old when my mother first started sending me into the doctor’s office alone. I was merely eleven when my father placed the fate of our relationship in my unscathed hands. All attachments to my youth are quite frivolous now, as they have yet to serve me more good than to serve me harm. The love I have for my parents is different than I will ever be capable of replicating. We seem at odds every other night but Sunday comes and we are all that the other has. I am what the gentler half of my mother could have been had she not been forced into independence at an even younger age than I was (I admire her for this everyday). I am the boyish-offspring of my father and I have been told that is all his side of the family can say about me. Nevermind what parts of them I can be, but I remember who they were before I even existed. To understand and love someone is not to disregard who they used to be, but to fully know and love them anyway. This goes for anything, parents, friends, lovers; you must learn how to see the flaws in someone and love them anyway, because skin is fragile. People are not immortal nor are they untouchable. You cannot love someone and scratch at their scars until they bleed. That is not love. Loving my parents in what may seem to some as an impetus towards regression has helped me in loving my own life a bit more. I can appreciate overcoming obstacles because I know my mother, and I know that had she not selflessly given me life, her wisdom and talents would be more obvious to not just my sister and I. Had my father forgiven his family for leaving all the sadness in the youngest boy, he would love my sister and I while sober. 

I have loved another the way you’re meant to only once. Through properly creating a foundation and, sorry to say, properly anticipating its demise I created something beautiful. Not too much on him, the love I enumerated is mine. Though it was beautiful, preliminary blows still do affect someone for times later but nonetheless. Everywhere that I go my love trails behind me in a way that reminds me of a helpless duckling. If I have created a young and helpless thing then that must make me its mother and by that clause, I must shield her through evolution and await her independence. However poetic I may make it sound, ironically, I am not sure I am ready to be a mother. I couldn’t quite house such a huge soul inside of what I am barely learning to live in myself. If this is the case and I must raise her, will I not just retreat into my childhood again? Wouldn’t fate inevitably lead me to give her up? No, no, never this. My love follows me everywhere but I must face it head on. My love follows me everywhere but what she doesn’t know is that she has drained the warmth out of me a time or two. Yes, I do return to her as she deserves, but where are the amends I am promised? What undone lover of mine has yet to conjoin faiths with me and whisper adorations that almost sound like prayers? 

This does not go to say I cannot appreciate the subjectivities love gifts everyone. Often I grant undeserving novices with the love of a girl, they grow into themselves, and they kiss their mother goodnight. How can I condemn something so beautifully personal to human life? Although I do know these instances occur and do return love for a benefit, all hearts are also quite selfish. Mothers don’t want you to know when they are thinking of themselves and fathers rarely ever comprehend what good you are outside of themselves. All hearts crave the feeling of fulfillment. Oftentimes I love people and expect more: they must love me back!– and when I am met with indifference I drain myself into the worse half of my fate. Loving is brave and because it makes you so it must be dangerous. After I love someone I am met with what feels like them taking back their gifts like they’re some sort of useless commercial birthday card. The people I love seem to reciprocate it by failing attempts at mocking my maturity. At least then I can get a good laugh out of how only then they are publicly loved. But I am still not loved, I am just eradicated. I can’t help it when my own desire grows from under me and suddenly I am wickedly sinful, cruel, and my own mother is crying. How will I ever meet someone who will understand? The day I do I will be every half of me. When I am loved despite my flaws I will be whole. My love is a simple and selfless thing this way, I maintain her before myself however exhausting it may be. I will always depend on the better half of me as I have learned from the better half of my parents. How blessed am I to have a heart at all! 

Recently I have been kept up at night as a result of my love leading me into unknown places. She has danced with another heart before and yes, she does miss it, but I don’t have it in me to tell her of the rotten ones. How, when she is giving her all, could my own head reprimand her? I wish someone were there to do it for me but enough on him, my love is not his. She may be mine but she is greater than I am. I am chained to my love like I am her shadow; but this is what motherhood must be. This is what I must be confined to, and I can see past the chains and stolen spotlight because in spite of my flaws, my love loves me anyway.