The Dagger that Stabs Us...

Love is a common word in today's language.  What a shame...I mean to say that it's a shame that we make common the most rare of gifts to come by in this short lived life.

I mean think about it.  Think about every relationship in which time has been invested, emotions have been shared, memories have been made.  I would venture to say that only the fewest of these--only the most select few--would be worthy of being called "love."  So is it wrong to use it so fleetingly?

In Raymond Carter's "What We Talk About When We Talk about Love," all four characters (the term character, here, meaning both a role in the given story and an eccentric) imagine different meanings of love.  The character Terri finds appreciation in the abuse she suffered from a previous lover, while the character Mel rambles on that everyone has loved several people and that it doesn't matter if anyone was to lose a love.  I have to, absolutely have to, believe that Carver's characters are wrong.  Dead wrong.

 When it comes to that one person, that one person that God is, even now, preparing my heart to fall madly in love with, when we get to know each other...  Where we've spent so much time with each other, that when I look to her eyes and they meet mine, and I know instantly what they're saying, just because...  At the age of eighteen, I hardly know what love is and yet, by simply imagining that I might have that beautiful and one-of-a-kind woman to look forward to, well that just makes waiting worthwhile.

Love is the dagger that stabs us.  I know very little about how the body works, and even less about weapons.  But when I was young and my mind was filled with endless safety information, I remember someone once said that, if a knife or some other sharp object were to sink through my skin, not to pull it out, that for the time being I would be fine.  They told me that it was when the knife was pulled out, that that was when I would start to feel it.  My heart would desperately keep pumping but I would begin losing the very essence that kept me alive.

Perhaps, if love is the dagger that stabs us, we are still fine.  The dagger has now become apart of me, and I am alive.  Perhaps it could also be applied in the coined saying "love hurts."  I can only imagine that some moments would be worse, and some better than others.  There would be moments with hurt and pain, but there would also be those precious few seconds of life where I see, more clearly than ever, that I have reason to sing praises to God for being alive and having the opportunity to still be apart of this knife and know what living really is.  This knife, this dagger, has then taught me to truly appreciate life.

It is then, sorrowfully, only a truly hurtful situation when love is removed from me.  When the dagger is gone and my life source begins to leave me, with it, then I have reason to fear.

Most wounds heal, eventually.  But it would not be without its cost.  Every day I would have that scar to wake up to.  I would still be able to vaguely remember the feeling of its presence.  And that memory that, at one time in my life, I truly knew what the gift of life, so hard to keep hold of, really meant: well it was love...