Love tainted with humanity.

If you are awake enough, you know how it should be. But just because you know it doesn't mean it's easy.

No one teaches us anything about love. No one teaches us how to love ourselves, for starters. No one teaches us anything about human relationships. We think it's implicit, because it just happens. But we know nothing. We make mistakes after mistakes, doing the best we can with what we have, and with what we think we know. But how many of us take the time to learn anything about loving right?

We don't want this. We don't want pain, we don't want to suffer, we don't want to hurt. And yet...

When I was a kid, I didn't believe in God, but I believed in some kind of heaven. My cute explanation for this was very simple: My love couldn't just die and disappear. It was so big for me, so intense, I couldn't even imagine how it could vanish when my body perished, because it had nothing to do with my body. It was a separate entity that took over everything I was. It had nothing to do with me, I could just stand there and feel it. The same way I could feel the heat of the sun on my skin, or the wind blowing over my face, love just flowed into my heart. So love would remain, even if I didn't.

This thought shaped me into who I am today. But back then, even if I didn't love right, my love was purer, cleaner, innocent. As I grew up I felt like the world started to pollute it. I promised myself I wouldn't let the world destroy this part of me, but as time passed, this task became more and more difficult. I could feel it happen very slowly. I looked around and everyone was so shattered and broken, to a point where they wouldn't believe in love anymore.

14 y/o me left messages for future me all around. I would write little notes and hide them where I knew I would find them later. They all said "Believe in love, it exists." Young me was way wiser than present me. She's still teaching me lessons no one else can, and reminding me things I forgot, thing I lost in the fire of growing up and getting hurt.

Now, my love is tainted of humanity. It comes with many things that should not be there. Things I collected from the world without noticing, without ever wanting to. It comes with jealousy, fear, selfishness, pain, attachment, and more things that shouldn't belong here, things that I don't want and I don't need. Everyday I try to clean the mess, but it's not easy.

Now that I know better, I know how it should be. Free.

Instead, it's got spots all over. Up until a point where I didn't think it was love anymore, but a very human thing in it's place, something that would die with me. It took me some time to understand that just because something isn't perfect, it's not less real.

Love is still there. Hiding underneath the mess. Scared. But untouched. It's not less love just because of my humanity, and this weird program embedded into our brain that many confuse with actual love.

Our job is to undress it from all the layers of dirt it has from society, we have to polish it and nurture it. We have to study ourselves and learn what is part of it and what isn't.

But please, don't forget it's still there. Don't let the world and it's ways tell you otherwise. Don't let pain confuse you. Don't let society fool you and tell you how love should look like. Learn yourself, study, don't forget no one has ever taught you anything about it, and you just know what you've seen.

I still believe the whole purpose of our existence is to learn how to love again. I'm not talking only about romantic love. Love is everywhere. The whole universe is put together thanks to it. There's no greater love than the one of atoms that hold each other to create matter. Even the spaces that look empty, they're still there holding on to dear existence, drawing everything together even when it looks far away.

Love travels faster than light, because it's just always there. And it will be there even after you are gone, after everything is gone, love will be the only thing that remains.