The Burden of Love

When you love someone; you open yourself up to suffering. That’s the sad truth. Maybe they’ll break your heart, maybe you’ll break their heart and never be able to look at yourself in the same way. Those are the risks. That’s the burden.

Like wings, they have weight. We feel that on our backs, but they are a burden which lifts us. Burdens which allow us to fly…

Burdens that make us better than we are. Burdens which allow us to fly…

Love is graceful, effervescent, uplifting, like the owl that soars, carried on by the wind to a place of freedom. The owl is a symbol of transformation, such is love, the concept that reshapes us into better versions of ourselves.

We are often immune to the thought that love makes someone able to have a soul. Immune to love. As is a person who has had their source of this feeling ripped away like a bandage off of a still-healing wound. A person who has just regained the part of their life, their humanity and, of course, their soul. Someone who was once utterly consumed by love, but is now consumed by heartbreak.

Maybe we all over value things which are essentially worthless to others. The things we do for love.

The little things. The random acts of romance. Flowers. Candlelit dinners. A long hug. A warm, genuine smile. Subtle, but meaningful touches that ensure a strong connection. These are the memories we cherish and remember above all else. The memories that will never die.

My heart is torn asunder, the pieces washed down the stream of anguish that floods me. I can no longer bear my reflection, since it has become so marred with sorrow and despair. Every breath I take without her next to me constricts my chest and endless thoughts of her plague my dreams, with the incessant knowledge that I will never set my eyes upon her mesmerizing visage again.

Her soft, sable hair, which the warm wind gathered up and tossed about, while she danced in the clear, cerulean sea. The way her wide, jade green eyes twinkled happily with mischief and reminded me of an owl, one who could see into the very center of you. Her sun-kissed skin that glowed like treasure in the afternoon sun.

Perhaps a reminder of all that was a sort of punishment reserved for the most disdained of men, the reminder of such exquisite passion. Perhaps he himself was the real villain all along, he wondered. Was he being punished?

He suddenly wanted to forget everything. Their first date, their first kiss, the honeymoon, making love, but most of all, what it felt like to be in love, what it felt like to have that feeling ripped from you and replaced with sadness and regret. He just wanted to be oblivious to the pain, to feelings, to emotions. He wanted to drown himself in feeling nothing for a change. Opening his eyes; he hadn’t realized that they were even closed; he found himself in the water, half submerged, like he was going to drown.

Then he heard someone calling to him.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

His daughter. He would know that little voice anywhere.

“Daddy! What are you doing in the water? You’re going to catch a cold! Mommy always said that I shouldn’t go for a swim in the dark or I’ll catch a cold, so you shouldn’t either,” she said, very matter-of-factly.

Realization washed over him, and the rain cloud over his head dispersed as he slowly got up out of the water and made his way back to land, where his little girl waited with a towel.

“Here you go, Daddy, so you don’t get cold.” She ran to him as he crouched down, so she could wrap it around his shoulders, and he shivered, turning to face the vast ocean and sitting down.

His daughter, the spitting image of his beautiful wife, sat close to him and put her tiny arm around him.

“I miss Mommy.” She revealed.

“I miss her too, sweetheart. I miss her so much. I love you so much.”

Warm tears formed in his eyes as he spoke, contrasting with his cool face and dripping onto his already soaked towel. His mind hushed, and he hugged his child close, burying his face in her hair, which smelled just like roses, the way her mother always smelled.

He gazed longingly out onto the Caribbean sea, reminiscing about their cheerfulness, a sort of cheerfulness he would never experience again, he thought, as he saw a bird. An owl, to be exact, with wide green eyes and feathers as black as night. He couldn’t be sure, as the setting sun cast similar shadows across the slowly cooling white sand beach.

But a soothing aura soon washed over him like a calming current, and a heavenly voice whispered in his ear, “I will always love you. Never forget that.”