leaving the rest behind

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down."
- Woody Allen

I have learned that being in love - real, true, hard love does take a lot of work. It takes suffering, and sacrifice and compromise. It also takes compassion, and compromise - and in turn, love brings many things. I've seen love in many forms - watched it burn in it's glory. I've also watched it crash down, after too much heat - and a lot of neglect and impatience. The thing about fire is it needs to be tamed to some extent, otherwise it burns the whole city down. I've watched love like that, I've even felt it. Love also seems to take many forms, and although the core of it remains - the outer shells will mold and form as you do. Love is made to bend and curve and curl - and real love is constructed to take a lot of abuse. I remember being a child and having the illusion that once "true love" was found, it was unbreakable. I believed that love meant happiness, joy and excitement - all the time. I believed that it was impenetrable, and that no matter what - true love stayed. I also remember being old enough to finally understand the falsity in such beliefs. It took trial and error, heart break, abuse and defeat before I could embrace all those things and really let myself go. Giving up possession of your heart is a really hard thing to do, and sometimes I still try and take it back (we'll blame that on my need to control). When it's all said and done though, when I am done my day and I am laying in my bed next to you - I am humbly amazed at how worth it this is. It's worth the compromising, and the arguments, the disagreements and the sacrifice. It's worth everything we endure, because I am enduring it with you.

"Love sets fire to your schedule, and then calls an end to time" Ani