Well, we are more than halfway through the Month of LOVE Guest Blogger Series and the stories we have read thus far have been emotionally moving and spiritually inspiring. And that is all because folks have been brave enough to share their inner most feelings about a topic that is more than red hearts and romance novels. LOVE is indeed beautiful, refreshing, exciting, and tender but it is also at times challenging and gut wrenching. Today’s Guest Blogger Post #16 is from a Snapchat friend called Wundersnapper! This story is RAW! It is also written in a unique style, almost stream of consciousness. It might not be for everyone to read as the author says, so you have been forewarned.  But in spite of the loss and pain in this story, there is hope. And that hope lies in the most precious beings, Wundersnapper’s children.

What is LOVE?

I see love like a picture… with a mom and a dad… with cascading ages of children beside them.   Everybody is holding hands standing in a circle all smiling, faces showing nothing of the world outside of that circle.

Now, let me be clear I didn’t have a circle like. When I think about being one of the kids in the picture. I can’t even begin to relate. Maybe it is because of my childhood.

See, I was adopted out of a horrible home and into a good family at age seven, and now decades later I find myself in a world where I’ve lost everyone to death from that family except my adoptive father. My childhood view is of a replacement circle which has now become a line.

I was one of the kids growing up that you’d read about in the paper. “School investigation leads to arrest of local man for multiple counts of felony sexual assaults of minor children” might have been the headline.  No, I wasn’t one the minors but my sisters were.  I was abused, just thankfully just not in that way.

I know some of you reading this know this type of pain, how it can interfere with your ability to love and how the abuse stays abusive long after the event. Decades after some events. I’ll know when I take my last breath if it lasts a lifetime, I’m guessing it will. I am sorry to make you feel abused again by retelling my story. Know that I’m certainly apologetic and wish to acknowledge it. I’m sorry.

Others are thinking “this man has jumped way too deep for a post about love”. Well let me say I apologize for taking up your time but perhaps this blog isn’t for you, just like love isn’t always to be shared between everyone, words aren’t either.

Although I see a picture when I hear the word love, it isn’t really some image. It’s a mixture of feelings. It’s actually built on a lot of feelings. For some of you it’s all your life’s feelings, for others you feel just brushes of it, light strokes barely even affecting you. I believe it’s a word that is taught, that the feelings we have inside combine with new life experiences and this combination brings the word love to life. It permanently imprints your brain with a new reworked definition. It is a word that is constantly changing but it’s also a word that I believe cannot be changed much by looking at one’s past.

There are thousands of words on love, not many people have even come close to explaining the TRUE definition. Even in volumes of books and hours of lectures they cannot. So I won’t try to explain how our feelings and our environment do a dance together to produce what we define as love. I just wish to acknowledge with this post LOVE is fluid in its nature.  It has the  ability to pick us up, and love’s endless ability to resist the pull down.

I’m thankful for it not staying still or I would have missed experiencing it. Remember my first circle didn’t even exist. I have my own circle now, it’s one I helped to create. It’s made up of other humans formed and made with my definition of love in mind. I can hope that someday maybe when my children see a picture of a family standing in a circle, they too will think of love. And I also hope that they can relate to the child’s perspective in the picture. Love should only ever multiply.

Thank you Wundersnapper for trusting me to share your LOVE story. You are a testament to someone who has gone through the fire of loss; from your parents to your spouse. Yet you continuously strive to LOVE! You can’t help it as it will always CIRCLE back to you!

LOVE circle,

YDP