**Sorry Rex County Orange*

Loving isn’t easy, and a lot of us are fucked up from it. The worst thing any of us can do is expect something that is not easy, to be easy. Love, for example, is born through the trials of time and how people step up to the plate for us. It is not as simple, straightforward, and easy as many new-age psychology wants us to think.

When we put this unnecessary pressure on love to be a perfect, honeymoony bliss, we dissuade true love from happening. Yes, love finds us when we least expect it. No, it isn’t as easy as ‘manifesting your perfect partner.’

I don't think we have to fight for it. Good love is good love. And it shouldn’t be an endless struggle with pit mounds of triumphs and failures. All true love has to do is let you go through what you do, and learn how to support you through it.

I think fear lives when we feel we are trapped somewhere. Oftentimes, emotional swings will trigger old fears, and it will FEEL as though those feelings will persist. They won’t. Sadness and anger pass, especially when they are given the space to burn themselves out. Love affords us the ability to swing through our phases on our own time, and not worry about having to adjust or alter how we feel for another person. To make it extremely clear, all humans function in phases. For women, its a monthly cycle magically tied to moon-time that feeds into a longer-term cycle. For men, your phases will happen when they do. Let them.

Even though I do believe that we are in control of a certain portion of our lives, these ‘positive manifestation’ gimmicks that run on people’s willpower alone irk me. It feels comparable to praying in a church, and when your prayers aren’t answered you either 1. aren’t a devout enough follower or 2. your cause wasn’t worthy. Our lives are our own creations THROUGH A GIVEN SET OF GIFTS AND GENETICS AND CIRCUMSTANCES. We must accept the reality of our circumstances fully in order to work within and out of them. It is easy for people with privilege to accept their circumstances because they don’t have decades of oppression working against them.

Before I carry too far down that rabbit hole…

Loving means taking the lump of who we are today and forgiving ourselves for what we did and didn’t do. Loving means tough work, and the beauty of the reward that follows. This work entails evaluating the motives behind our ‘whys,’ and trusting that we can step away from whichever parts of our personalities and actions that we no longer wish to keep alive.

Love is the work it takes to learn ourselves and love our flaws, so that we can throw that same depth straight back at the people we encounter. There are no absolutes. No obvious ‘forever yes's', only a whole lot of ‘this is what I want to be doings.’

Cause what they don’t tell you about love, is that it is a choice. It is the choice to invest in the human in front of you at the same time as you invest in yourself. And then, the trust that that human is supposed to walk alongside you on your path for a little while.

Let the good love be good, even, especially when, its not easy.