“You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.” 
― Jodi Picoult

The song comes on. You know what song. The one you say ‘Sh sh sh, hold on, I love this song’ as you turn up the volume. The ‘ Oh my gosh I haven’t heard this song in forever’ song, that you proceed to know every single word to. The song when you were younger, you were embarrassed to admit that you liked, so you played it on your walkman and sung to yourself. The song that your first love, loved too, which is how you knew it was love. That song. Your song. It comes on the radio. What do you do?

My song has something to do with falling in love. The moments of build up that weave into stories. The conversation that begins the story, and the ones that keep it alive. I used to be ashamed of this song, this dance of loving people with my whole heart. Of showing up to the plate, ready to swing, every inch of me prepared for take off. I tried to subdue it. To turn it down, and pretend like I was comfortable playing the half-assed hook-up culture games that tell you love comes after sharing your body.

Love is what happens when two people show up as they are, expecting to be loved as they are, because they will love you as you are. It’s not conditional though. There are no rules for the great love other than more love is more love, and that sometimes we aren’t able to love people how they need to be loved, even when it is plain as day how we could try. Love has to do with knowing when to try, and when to let go, and how to do both lovingly.

So here I am on the edge of another love story, and I can feel the fibers of my being coming to life. I can feel the song that I am made of starting to play in the distance. I can’t turn it down, I walk straight for it. I let the nights of whiskey and wigs wash over me. I let dancing in the garden, the flowers, the bread, wash over me. I let the world we have created and are creating, wash over me. And I watch the swell that I want to ride rolling in from across the distance.

It has taken a long time to see the weight I carried from past loves. It was like pretending to like a song that you really didn’t like, without trying to understand what the other person may have liked about it. I carried a series of affirmations that kept me in a place that I didn’t want to be. And I threw my shit out the second shit got hard. I scared away a lot of wonderful men to learn my lesson. After a lot of work, and even more time, I’ve learned it and I’m here about to turn my song up all the way.

Because baby I want to dance. Arms flinging, hips swinging, music blasting, count me in for whatever crazy thing this is. Even if its soft, and simple, and sweet… I’m ready to love the song I love, and be loved even more because of it.