<-------where is the love?------->

This one's about love. It's all about love recently. I've started using dashes and arrows to communicate my affections for the people and things I love. I feel like I'm full of it, to the point where it's a bit much to handle, these things are happening and I can't adequately express how I feel about them...

Strike one: Wanting to look after someone. As in, really look after them. Like, I'd make you Lemsip and pass you tissues but more than that, like I'd be there for you and take your shit and no matter what you were going through I'd hold it because that's just the most natural thing in the world for me to do. Remembering the difference between love and infatuation, I reckon. This isn't about how you make me feel...

Strike two: Wanting to look after myself. Standing on Portsmouth pier, discussing with Dani if jumping in would be suicide. Would you die? If not from the waves, then from the cold? Yeah, we reckon it would, and I'm standing there staring at the black waves hitting the legs of the pier and realise that there's nothing I want more than to stay alive. Wandering back across the pier, into the slightly safer part of the nightlife, so glad to be warm and breathing. That's all. It's enough to be alive right now.

Strike three: And this is important. I'm getting homesick now, which isn't like me. I haven't wanted home this much since September, in the awful loneliness that was Fresher's Week. If I've never said it before, and I'm not entirely sure I've ever said it to them, I fucking love my parents. More than anyone else on earth, my family are mine, my brother and all, and I am theirs. I was theirs first and I'll be theirs last. I want to buy my dad a kite, run off and play somewhere, the four of us.

Strike four: I'm talking to Est, about sites like this and this, and she says "it's just mental...very weird how much energy ppl put into hating". And I'm... Marra, that's so true, that's exactly it. This is the problem, you see, if we put as much energy into understanding each other, if we spent as much time building each other up, put some effort into withdrawing our heads from our asses long enough to see people for what they really are... And by 'really are', I mean to see people for the fragile, stupid, wonderful, messed, terrified, hilarious and genuine things that they 'really are'. If we could do that, if we could learn what to do with that...

Strike five: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Matthew 11:28-29. This, for me, is somewhat the point. I've never loved like that, or been loved like that before. I could go on, talk about 'greater love hath no man', 'for God so loved the world that he gave His only son', 'love one another and love Him'... You know the drill?

For me, all of it, this whole life thang, this whole love thang, comes back to God, to Christ. But however you see it, whatever you think it is or wherever it comes from, the point is that we need a whole lot more of it. Drugs aside, I think it's safe to say that the hippies had it right on that score. And maybe that's naive, perhaps talking about love in a world that loves cynicism is kind of redundant. But when you think about it, about family, partners, friendships, children, things like that, it doesn't really make sense if love isn't right in the heart of it.

That's where this post came from, really, trying to put into words that, no matter what you believe or whoever the hell you are or think you are, if you're spending more time hating than loving you've got something far wrong. I can't express it without sounding like a Hallmark card, but that's what I mean when I say I love someone -

<---------------------------------this much----------------------------------->

- I mean that they're exactly what's right about the world. They're where the love is.