Love vs Love (2/3)

When I say I love someone, I actually do. For most people, love is a salary for a high stress job and you need to do lots of things to earn it. It’s wrapped up in some velvet purse, and it’ll only come out when the right recipient appears.

In truth, the deserving one will always remain elusive. Don’t vie for my love, you thunder and roar. This is Mount Olympus. You’ll never get there. Complete the form and submit your fingerprints for checking. Finish all the tasks on this list.

But you’ll never qualify because, as summer college flings proclaimed, “you are not a blowup doll” or “your legs are too long”. Rubbish. That’s not why. You want what you can’t get. When these boys eventually got their precious listed items, they were sorely disappointed. Out came another list, and another. More and more women were needed to make up the right one. I was overjoyed to learn of their misfortunes.

Love is not a tangible quantity. We can’t hoard it. It has to stay always at the surface or our consciousness, as an offering of goodwill to all, even those that don’t make our cotton candy, soda pop shortlists. When I love someone, I know that the more I give, the more I have left over for myself. Love is not a muscle you can touch but it needs to be stretched to places that are hard to reach: Backstabbing friends who abandon you when you’re sick, gossipy clients, untrustworthy and self obsessed colleagues, suspicious neighbours.

I got loved in spades over the past week, from people I never expected to receive it from. Last Tuesday, while recovering from an autoimmune flareup, I went to the office to organise my work projects for the year. I was carrying a heavy tote and caught my foot on a box. I tripped and slammed face first, full body weight into a doorknob. I gashed the side of my face a half inch away from my eye. My Gucci frames saved my eyesight. They don’t have a scratch on them. However, the skin on my left palm, knee and a small area near my left eye, are held together by tape. I also have to visit the hospital every day to check the healing and change bandages. Today, I’m finally able to bend my knee and move my face.

The colleagues who scraped me off the floor, who rushed me to hospital and waited patiently for me to be released, are the people I loved anyway.