Can Love Be Conditional?

She takes to the page for solace. Self-solidarity. She composes her thoughts in lines as neat as her frown and the creases on her forehead. She breathes sometimes harshly, sometimes easily. It depends on the thoughts behind the words: harsh or easy.

Mostly, they are not easy.

She plunges onward. When the truth is unkind, literature can save her. Compose it yourself, she learned. Twist the story to fit the broken shapes in your heart. Love yourself with words when it feels like the world doesn't love you.

It's not the world, but it is her world. What she means to write is she grew up with a family that has opted out. This path away from her--friends have taken it before, also because of her children. But with her parents, the other family members, this feels different. More hateful. Less forgivable. More important. More . . . unkind.

She reflects on love. Can it be real if it can be paused for the sole purpose of interjecting belief? Is that not love that depends on expectation? Is that not the opposite of the unconditional love promised the little hearts born of this hurting mother's body. The hurting little hearts of her hurting little children who believe they are not loved and, just maybe, they are right.

Can love be conditional?

If that is love, she doesn't want it. She wants the love that works to keep her, that stretches and bends and breaks and reforms. Even when love is terrified. Terrifying. That's the love she wants. The love that is a risk. Not the love that is withdrawn based on love that can be withdrawn i.e. God's love.

There is no mercy in that.

She puts her pen down because all she can think is I hate this it's unfair my poor babies there is no mercy except the strength of the wounded warrior who rises.

She rises. She holds her children close and whispers how she loves them in their ears. Her love is flexible. She is willing to break if need be. She is ready.

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