Love

What exactly is "love"?

After all, isn't it just an emotion that one feels toward something
else? I understand it is possible to love someone, but situations
prevent you from being with that person. As sad as it may be, I
realized that there are very few people in this world that I have
loved. And I don't mean "liked" or "cared about", I mean truly loved
that person. Of course, my daughter is number one on the list. I can
not imagine not loving my daughter no matter what kind of strife she
may cause in my life. My family (parents and sisters) would be the
other individuals.

Then there is the love of my extended family. I love them. I know I
do. But, even that type of love seems so distant and not as close as
the love of my family and daughter.

Of course, we come down to the love I have had in my past
relationships. Of all the past relationships, I really only loved a
couple of people. And I mean really loved them. But I have never
really put everything I had into a relationship until my last one. I
really put all of my heart and soul into the relationship and gave
all the love I had to her. This was definitely a good thing. I have
no regrets for putting so much love into the relationship. And then
after the breakup, I was naturally heartbroken and hurt. This was to
be expected and is part of the natural healing process.

But today, the unexpected happened. I have been very guarded with my
feelings of love toward anyone since my breakup. I guess it's just my
way of protecting myself from the pain. And when I have talked with
my last girlfriend regarding our feelings toward each other, it has
always been that she "loves" me but is not "in love" with me anymore.
Alright, I can understand that... But this morning she made a
different statement.

She told me, "I love you". Now, I'm no fool and I'm not trying to
read into this. I know she is not trying to get back together, but
she said that she was afraid to tell me how she truly felt. That she
has always loved me and will always love me. This starts to create
some form of grey area.

When she told me that she loves me but is not in love with me, I
understood that to be that she does not want to see me hurt but does
not feel romantic feelings towards me. After all, I feel that way
about my ex-wife. She is the mother of my daughter so I would never
want to see her extremely ill or something serious happen to her. But
at the same time, I have no romantic feelings toward my ex-wife. I
would never want to be back in that relationship again. This is how I
took my last girlfriends comments before. But now, she definitely
made the distinction regarding the new comment and I was totally
shocked. I was literally speechless and did not know how to respond.
All of the feelings I thought were gone suddenly swept back with such
force, but with those feelings came the anger. How could someone do
this to someone they truly love?

So what does this mean? Honestly, I think it is her way of healing
for herself. She said, " I truly love you and now I know I can say
it. I love you. I love you. I love you." The reason I think this is
her way of self-healing is because of the way she said it. It's like
she can be free and express her feelings toward me without any
consequences. She knows, I will not try to get back together. So now,
she feels she can express her love. And anytime someone says the same
sentence three times in a row, you know something is messed up
regarding that sentence.

(Hold on this needs a whole section by itself for the next sentence)

WHAT THE HELL???

As if our messed up relationship wasn't bad enough before, now she
goes and adds this to the mixed up emotions. Just when I thought I
figured out the concept of loving someone versus being in love with
them, she goes and adds this new variation of love. I wonder if I've
just got it all wrong and someone could explain what the hell this
whole concept of love is about.

Once again, this type of mornings really make me want to just clam up
and become the crazy old man on the corner with the cats. Maybe they
were in a similar situation and just snapped one day. And what the
hell is my fascination with the cats.... I don't even like cats. And
I certainly don't "love" them.

Ok, now I'm just rambling on. I need to go running and clear my head.