It’s enough to love. You believe it, though in moments like these, it’s harder to do. You wake up next to her in the morning, embrace her, leave her lying in your bed naked but for what amounts to a few threads. The same place you woke up the day before and the day before that. You kiss her cheek on the way out. Wherever you are, wherever you go, you always reach out to touch her, you reach out to make a connection that says not, “you are mine” but simply “I am yours.” You’re not saying, “I can’t go on without you.” It’s more eloquent, a simple gesture that resigns itself to “my life is better for having you in it.” Because it is, as you’ve told yourself, enough to love. It’s enough to wrap your arms around her as you fall asleep. It’s enough to play all day long with her by your side. Hike mountains with her, climb down to rivers, ride horses, read at coffee shops, watch parades. Love doesn’t mean your lips on hers. It doesn’t mean her clothes cascading to the floor. It doesn’t mean commitment. Love means compassion, empathy, giving, giving, giving. Love is an end to self. Its own reward. It’s enough to love.
You tell yourself this because first, it’s true, and second, to lift the weight from your heart. If it isn’t enough to love, then the heart becomes the world on Atlas’ shoulders. The heart becomes a terrible gravity. We fight hard enough to stand against gravity as it is. Love can’t be a burden, you tell yourself, because if I love, then I’ll never walk alone. Love is no piece of furniture that takes two to carry. At worst, (at best), love is a canvas chair, easily lifted, carried casually from one friendly fire to another.
It’s enough to love. Love is an ocean, not a river. There may be shores but there are no banks. There may be islands but only to rest upon before we cast ourselves to the mercy of the sea again. It is buoyant and limitless. It will carry us, if we let it. It must, because if it cannot carry me, I am lost. I don’t have the strength to carry love. I don’t have the strength to try. I can only be the sail on its sea and let its winds take me wherever they blow. I must have strength, but only the strength to let go of my desire for a goal; I must have the will to keep my sails full and move ever onward. I must deny expectation, deny conditions and contracts, deny yes and no. There can only be existence, not control. I cannot bend love to time nor compass rose, it has no direction, no definition. It is a statement of being, like “I am. You are. We are.” Love is. And because love is, it must be enough.
So I give myself to love. Unconditionally, to love. Without purpose, to love. As a journey, to love. I do not give myself over to love romantic, I do not give myself to love platonic. I give myself to love without adjectives, without scope, breadth, width, depth. Love has none of these, for they are all limits. I give myself to love beyond limits. I give myself to love beyond words. For it is enough to love.
