Overkill

Love, love, love. We love everything. We love our dogs, our cats, our homes. We love our cars, our new snowboard, this new book. Love. The word used to mean something. One did not use that word for mundane things. It was revered and used in beautify longing poetic verse. Some of the most prolific writers, wrote sonnets, lyrics, odes, to the emotion of love, once saved and cherished for a one and only. Now it’s used like the word like, but a little stronger.

What does it mean when you love something? Does it mean you can’t live without it? Maybe, it means that the thing completes you, in a way nothing else can. My hairbrush completes my daily look. Should I love that too? Of course not.

So why does everyone toss out the love word at any and every little thing? The word has so much deeper meaning than that. It was once reserved for the one person you would live your life with, family members and or dear friends. Even the use of the word love, with and for a lover, meant something. It was a promise of things to come, a future with a person you wanted to share the rest of your life with. Not anymore.

When someone says, “I love you”, then says they love their burrito, or they love the smell of the new trash bags, doesn’t that lower the meaning of the word, for the one being told they are loved? It sure doesn’t make that sentiment more meaningful.

Love, should be seriously considered carefully. To love something romantically or not, is to cherish, revere, to share with the most treasured things in life. People. I am fairly certain, it is said in the most widely read book in life, that we should “love one another, and love your neighbors as yourself.” I don’t recall a line where it was said, “love one another and your neighbor as yourself, and the new tv, that flower, and those shoes.”

Love is sacrificial. I would not sacrifice one thing for the shoes I so call “loved”. The same applies to any thing in life. I may like them, emphatically, even, but love? No.

I am guilty of misusing the word as well. I am by no means innocent of degrading the sentiment to the description of how I feel about my deodorant. But I try not to do it. I don’t tell people that I don’t love that I love them. Yet many do. It seems meaningless then doesn’t it.

Do you love everything and everyone? Doesn’t that mean there is nothing reserved as special for one special person?

I believe the entire world has made love a business. Once a year we all try to demonstrate love to the ones we do love, by buying them something. These things are to show them, they are special and more loved than anyone else, in their lives. That makes no sense.

If the word love meant something special and guarded for only a few, it would mean something. Buying me a box of chocolates, or worse, cut dead flowers, doesn’t tell me or show me you love me above all else. It tells me, “here, I need to buy a pass, for not showing you I loved you more than anything this past year.” Worse, it means, “I was thoughtless all year and today I thought of only you.” Neither option shows love or even says love.

Love has been cheapened to a dead handful of pretty petals that will fall off and land on the table within a week, or add a couple pounds to your muffin top in the same amount of time.

When the last petal falls, and I’ve eaten the last bonbon, then your love is gone. Come on.

My mom used to say, "you don’t have to buy me something to show me you love me. Make me something” and “don’t tell me you love me, show me.” She already knew what I am discovering more and more on the daily. The word love is meaningless.

You don’t know I love you by the tools I bought on sale at Lowes, any more than the rock on my finger, tells me you love me, and promise to be mine forever and that I am yours forever.

It doesn’t matter how Hallmark phrases it on a little card stock.

Love is a person being with you when you are sick. It’s your partner, sitting next to you, bored as hell, just to be in the same room with you. It’s a feeling you get when you ponder what life without them would be like and you can’t fathom a minute let alone the rest of a lifetime, without them. Does a trinket convey that sentiment? No. Does the word love, show that you can’t, or rather would not want to take another breath without, them, right after they’ve heard you say you love your new iPhone. Think about it.

It has to mean something. Something not ordinary, not common.

I want special, I want what is for me, alone. I want what no one else gets, gets to hear, or gets to feel (aside from family). See, the thing is this. If I get that, as a woman, I don’t need the bobbles and gifts and dead flowers. I know and I feel that everyday and nothing else compares.

I came to this realization one day, when I was speaking to a family member that had left, never to be a seen or heard from again. They once in a blue moon, contact me and after a cordial chat, they will say they love me, expecting the same in return. Saying it was and many times is, a knee jerk reaction. I had a very quick epiphany at that very moment. I did not love this person. I just didn’t. I could not say it. First, I did not have that sentiment toward them at all. They were never in my life. Second, there was no way I believed they had those feelings for me. That would require they be present in my life. And that was not the case.

I held back and never said it back. To this day, I can’t just spit the word love to just anyone. It feels wrong, deep inside. If I had said I loved them back, then that word has no meaning for me, and no value. I reserve the word and the emotion for extremely special persons inn my life. With them, I use it and often, because I feel it for them and from them.

Keep love special. Guard it like rare gems that are in short supply and finite. Then will be far more valuable, than the feelings you have for your new garage door. Then the person that hears that word from your lips, will cherish it and know it is precious and unique, uncommon. No one wants to feel common.