Can You Admit You Are Capable Of Feeling Love?

I read In Five Years by Rebecca Serle. It is one of those books that tugs at your heart and has plot twists that keep you wondering. This book is about love, or at least that’s what I am taking away from it. Here is a quote from the book:  You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists.

So, I do not know what love is, and that is why I ‘love’ the conversation between Pooh and Piglet. Piglet: “How do you spell ‘love’?” Pooh: “You don’t spell it…you feel it.” I have always considered myself a practical person, and intellectually, I have stuck to it. That is my spelling, I guess. But, at some level, I know I can feel love - because I married for love. And what I felt for my first and only dog, Aki, can only be described as love. I have a friend and family who I will never say I love, but know deep within that I do.

Why do I hesitate to admit that I can feel love? Even as I write this statement, it feels as if I am looking at myself writing it. It is easier to hide behind the technicality of the question than actually feel the question. It is easier to intellectualise about love and what it means, what it does not mean, and what the opposite of love is, because it is safe territory. But, I know deep down, even as I am spouting those words, that I know the feeling of love. There is this gap - a part of me feels love, and another part refuses to acknowledge that I feel love. Even though it is the same person, why the split? Even now, I am painfully aware that I have successfully avoided answering the question I started this paragraph with. And there is this intense desire to open another tab to avoid even more.

Let me tackle it another way: Why can I not admit that I am capable of feeling love? Maybe it will prove the reality that I have created of myself as being this tough girl who can survive on her own without needing anybody else? Maybe because it means I will have to be open to heartbreaks, because if you are capable of love, you can be hurt. So, best not to admit that you are capable of the feeling? Or, maybe because I cannot control love - the heart wants what it wants, and sometimes it has nothing to do with reality. By not saying that aloud, I am kidding myself into believing I am in control. Or, maybe because it is a burden - if you love somebody, you have to be there for them, and that’s a lot to ask of myself. Or, maybe it’s because I do not think I deserve to be loved? Perhaps the reason I have never answered that question is because of this paragraph - it is messy and leaves me more muddled than before. I like to know - for sure, and love is not that because you can only feel it.

Whatever the reason, at least I am exploring the question in this blog. From the being to the page through words—that’s got to count for something, right? This is the state of my mind, right now, and I respect that. Who knows - maybe one day I will read the blog and think - what did I write? or I could say - wow, that’s really deep.

For now, all I know is this is my NOW and it does not have to have a future to matter! Where are you NOW?