Frankly Put: What is Love and Other Stories
“It’s not often I find myself eager to write about love,
In fact, every time I try to write about love, my hands cramp,
Just to show me how painful love can be,” ~an excerpt from one of my favourite pieces.
I’ll be honest, I don’t have some catchy opening to this one this time. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I have actually written anything about love in this sense, here. Sure, stories and poems but still...
I mean how do I even start speaking about it? I suppose the best place to start is always a definition, right? So, what is love? “Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me… no more.” Hehe. On the real though, what is love? What about it makes it so fascinating, so drawing to the point that one can love love? (shout-out Lemme Land Podcast)
For days now, I have stared at this title not knowing how to begin to speak about something that I have been away from for such a long time. I suppose in some ways there is that hurdle, like visiting an old friend and not knowing which drawer they put the spoons in anymore. It’s easy to hide behind flowery language and metaphors, behind fiction and characters that aren’t me. Heck, I guess I shall open all the drawers until I find the spoons.
It is quite something to try and describe love in its essence. Ironic, that the one thing we all have, we often say we cannot find the words for. Yes, science can call it chemical reactions in the brain but it still exists beyond the brain. It exists in the heart, in the soul, in the mind, in the whole bloody body. Love is the meat on the bones of art. I suppose that is why it is so easy to sing along to our nostalgia bombs of early 2000’s RnB songs.
Art can say that love is pain. I’m conflicted. Is it the absence of that love or the presence that is pain? Heartbreaks, death, in whatever way we lose that love, it hurts. There is a void torn in us even when we claim to be whole on our own. Is man without love even whole? Perhaps not. At the same time, placing in our odds, what is the possibility of loving someone so much it hurts?
Some say love is the sun, moon and everything in between. You could draw maps of the constellations and you will find love there. You could trace the origins of war and find love. I’d go as far as to say if you dig hard and deep enough you might just find that to hate is to love. If love is everything and anything, maybe that is why when it leaves, whatever existed within us that allowed beauty into our lives feels like nothing.
One thing I know though is that love never really leaves once it is there. Love tends to find the most comfortable place within us and makes a home, adamantly refusing to be evicted. It has the ability to tease us with nostalgia and prick us every so often with good memories. Can we also talk about how the happiest memories become the saddest ones? Honestly, what is that trade-off? For the price of heartbreak, hii maisha by the way.
Anyway, I told myself I was not going to be negative about it. When I think about it, love is like a permanent filter. Something as mundane as shopping runs could feel like the greatest adventure. You could look back at it and take off those lenses (or try to) and you would see how bland that thing really is. Ah, to be loved and to love.
As I am writing this, Valentines is hovering in the air about me with in-your-face sales and sudden colouring of streets with flowers. I’ll probably see people walking hand in hand with whomever through town, restaurants with seating for two, full and most of all, the colour red, as I am heading home from a full day of work. (Edit: I was right.)
I mean, it is fun to indulge in stories of Nairobi and its antics but for real people out here are being love on very deeply. In some ways, maybe we are scared to accept that it actually exists if we put in the effort to hold on to it when it blatantly smacks us across our face. Maybe I am scared…
Anywho, love is beautiful. When I say this I don’t only mean the good parts that we try to skip to. I also mean in the parts where the light doesn’t shine. In the frustrations and anger as we unravel one another with commitment. In the fears and awkward realizations as we unravel ourselves in the love of another.
To have someone who believes in you on days when even God has to ask you for a little faith is something that grows you in ways that you could never trace over in your self-love. Yes, love is the meat on the bones of art but loving is an art. It is both a “You know when you know” and a sharpened skill. If I could give a straight logical answer to it, I would be in line for one of the greatest minds of all time. However, I don’t want that accolade.
Let me do simp things for my “one”. Let me slip and slide into the irrational and say it was for love, what I did. Dear love, come find me. I may not be lost but maybe you could show me the things I never knew I should be looking for.
For that which wishes to not be rationalized, allow me to shut my mind to. If the most beautiful things are felt and not seen, allow me to close my eyes and then feel for what love is, to put it Frankly.
