Love is a battlefield... wanna see some scars?

Who doesn't react to that teensy-weensy, enormously influential, four letter word? Just imagine for a moment how many expressions of art have been dedicated to that icon? How many bad decisions, awful mistakes, broken homes, black eyes, unwanted/wanted babies, marriages, divorces, tabloids, scandals, murders, suicides, pornography, hallmark cards and harlequin romances have been made because of "love". Sure there are many wonderful things done in the name of love, but lets be honest, they are few and far between.

Love is a tool being used shamelessly by our governments and large corporations to make money and to enslave the people. Most people don't even know what their 'loved ones' mean when they say "I love you," or have never even thought to ask what it means to someone else or to themselves for that matter. Love means so many different things, and it rarely means the same thing to any two people. We get the idea of romantic love and finding the 'right one' from the media; the fiery, undeniable and overwhelming passion that we can't live without. So many people are bent on that idea of love and assume that it is love.

Well what if that is merely a suggestion made to highly suggestive minds to get them to buy things so that they may get a better chance of finding and 'landing' their one. I'm not even saying that IS it, but just what if? Well if that was the case then love would have to be something else, based on something else, not just what we are told and fed. Something we learned from our mothers perhaps... our parents whether they were present or not, are how we learn about love. How they love and treat their loved ones, how they allow themselves to be treated. How they treat us.

When I was a younger girl, I encountered so many people who had rules about the expression of love. As in to say "I love you"; they had intricate stories about why they should not say it, or what it would mean if they did. I have heard the line "I don't say I love you very easily" so many times. As if those words in themselves were a power to withhold or to give depending on the worth of the person receiving them. Or the person giving the gift had some expectations of what would happen if they did say those three little words. Like they would be bound eternally to the person they said it to, and would have a whole mess of responsibilities and complications born strait from their mouth. What does love mean to a person like this?

I have to admit in my experience, it had been mostly guys who had such issues with saying it, but I have definitely met quite a few women who suffer from the same problem. The issue I have with this is that most people behave this way, with these unspoken expectations directing them, yet they are exactly that; unspoken. We need to talk about it more. Show your scars, but know what they are, don't just lay them on someone who does not wish it or even know it expecting them to behave in some particular way. Your love is something within you; your relationship with yourself. No one else can truly give it to you except maybe your mother, the initial barer of the much coveted love, unfortunately some mothers do not see it in themselves to give.

It it true that people do love, and are loving to others and it can feel so wonderful to be loved, yet the sad fact is that you cannot give someone love who does not want it, or cannot feel it in themselves. You cannot win love like a prize or manipulate it out of someone. It only comes from the deepest excavation of yourself, and when you find it and hold it gently and respectfully in your own hands, only then can it be possible to share it with someone else.

Love is a light-hearted dance upon the abandoned battlefield, to honor the end of the war.