Still, I'll Choose to Love

It has taken me a lifetime to not make excuses for being authentically me.  Through like minded souls, I have come to learn that what once I saw as a flaw, is truly a gift.  Blessed to be taught by the hearts of others with similar philosophies, this is what I know:

We are the unabashed lovers.

When  we walk through the threshold, it is obvious that our hearts proceed  our bodies as introductions are made.  We peer deep into  others  eyes searching for clues as to what makes our new friend beautiful.  We have not been introduced to a stranger, for to us, the word does not exist.  There is an unmade connection behind every face.  This is a certainty.

We ask questions because we care.  We want to know you and we want to love you.  We see the finite world that exists and we believe that traveling it  with you makes our world more intimate and beautiful.  When you break, we too will break.  When you succeed, we will rejoice with you.

We very seldom accept evil as a possibility and as a result often put ourselves in harms way.  We are firm believers in the silver lining that shines through clouds and will crawl on our hands and knees through the mud to ensure that it is seen in all people.  Sometimes it is found, quite often not.  Tattered through the disappointment, we remain hopeful that perhaps, somehow we simply have missed the beauty and light that must exist even still.  We are criticized unendlessly  for wasting our time on ungiving spirits, yet we know, that it is those hearts that offer the greatest return to our own should they one day soften.  So we remain.

We understand your warnings;  we are not an ignorant tribe. We are led by our hearts, sometimes exclusively, rather than our minds.  It is what makes us us.  It is why we have glorious, life-long connections and why we are regularly tormented by those who have let us down.  We recognize that there is another way, but it is this language where our fluency will flourish.  We are not ridiculous or naive.  We understand the risks.  We always have.  The potential return for ourselves and others on our investment is worth the gamble.

Yes, fiercely we will love.  With every fiber of our humanity we will love.  And we will be loved by many.

But on that day, (and these days will come as surely as the sun warms the earth) that we realize our hearts have been dismissed and disregarded, we will stand up as strongly and  fiercely as we tried to love.  We will gather our scuffed spirits and nurture all that has been damaged within us.  Because we love, we love ourselves, too.  And we will love again. 

Do not look upon us with  pity or with a need to counsel us into a thicker, more discriminating skin. Perhaps, we have been doing love right all along. With our final breaths, we will assuredly rest in the realized dream that we loved with our full hearts.