Hey look, I finally wrote something.

I haven’t been writing a lot lately. In fact, I haven’t written at all lately. It’s been a couple of months since I posted anything on my blog and 90% of the most recent stuff I was required to write for a class. And I’m trying to figure out why I walked away.

Part of it is sheer busyness. This past semester was crazy. Homework, senior year, working on campus and off, having a boyfriend, getting engaged, planning a wedding. Choirs, madrigals, assignments, collaboration. In the midst of it all, my own writing fell to the wayside.

Part of it is fear. I got spooked this semester because I wrote some things (and turned in some things) that, quite frankly, I kind of hated. They were overly dramatic and sad and, once I re-read them outside of whatever stressed fog I wrote them in, quite pathetic. My professors gently (or not so gently) informed me of these mistakes and I got scared. I retreated, afraid to put myself out there again. I’ve been blessed with writing I love and unbelievably encouraging friends and feedback. And I wasn’t used to this. Who is this girl writing? What is this crap she’s putting out? It wasn’t me. I wasn’t proud of it.

But I think now that perhaps the crap is always worth it. It’s worth learning from. Because look at it this way – that crap was in you. It needed an outlet. It needed to come out somehow. And so perhaps writing, the good, the bad, and the ugly, is always an outlet to your soul. Always a needed outlet to your soul.

So here’s the thought I’ve been mulling over for the past couple of days. It’s nothing particularly special I don’t think. It’s just something I think I need to do.

There’s this mantra that all you need is love. That everyone in the world is seeking love. That somehow the deepest need of our existence is to find love. And none of us is satisfied until we find what we’re seeking.

And I’m not sure any of us would argue that. As much as we may be satisfied with our single states, as much as we think we’re fine with that, we all are still seeking it. I don’t know. We all need it. There’s no denying it. If anything is self-evident, it would seem to be that. And I’m not being articulate. But I hope you know what I mean.

So here’s my thought. I don’t think we’re actually seeking love. I think actually we tend to resist it. And maybe I shouldn’t put this in grand terms. Maybe I should just talk about myself. I think, as much as I desire love, I also resist it. What is more, I resist the most fundamental type of love, the type of love that we should all be seeking. Unconditional love.

I know that sounds strange. But bear with me. Track with me a moment. We want love because it affirms us. Because it says someone loves who we are. Someone chooses us, prefers us over another. It builds our confidence. Makes us think maybe we are all these things. We’re beautiful, smart, funny, entertaining. Whatever it happens to be. Someone thinks we are those things, and so they love us. Love is a result. A payment. In a sense, love is earned.

We put in who we are, love is put out. It’s simple cause and effect.

The problem with unconditional love is it’s not earned. It stubbornly refuses to take into account all your remarkable features. All your wittiness. How good you look when you get dressed up to go out. Your 4.0 GPA. It really isn’t impressed by all that. It quietly ignores all that and puts everyone on an infuriatingly even playing field.

In fact, in the eyes of unconditional love, you’re just as good as anyone else. Is that really fair?

No. And I think that’s the point. And here’s where my own personal story comes in. Where all of these thoughts began I guess.

The other day I had something of a meltdown. I tend to have those. Sometimes my dramatic nature overwhelms my better judgment and I become an entirely irrational creature. Not one of my better features. I’m well aware. I don’t pretend to be proud of these moments.

In fact, in that moment, I realized just how often I have such meltdowns. I realized they are far too frequent. Embarrassingly so. And I became ashamed. Frustrated. Disgusted by how fully I understand my flaws and how seemingly helpless I am to control them. In that moment my life rushed past me in an endless stream of the same mistakes, the same flaws, the same struggles. Quite simply, it overwhelmed me. I was drowning in self-awareness, choked by the grief of all my mistakes.

And I gave up. I chose not to fight. I chose to believe I was hopelessly flawed. And I wanted everyone else to think the same. To leave me alone in my mistakes.

My wonderful fiancé, in his beautiful common sense, assured me this was, quite simply, stupid of me to say and assured me that he loved me. Me. And all the trouble I thought I caused.

And I in my unutterable wisdom, was somehow offended by his offer of unconditional love. I don’t want pity. I want to think I’ve earned love. To think I’m loved because I’m so damn great, not because someone has chosen to love me, stay with me, no matter what. So my realization that I was not actually that great, that at that moment I was not deserving anyone’s love and probably deserved a slap in the face for being stupid, was debilitating. It precluded the possibility of being loved. I didn’t earn it, so I didn’t get it.

And how dare you try to offer it to me. Don’t you realize I’m not that great?

Sometimes it’s an incredibly humbling thing to analyze one’s own thought process. You realize just how stupid and illogical you can actually be.

And here’s where I’m not sure where to go. I’m not sure what to do with this. No neat conclusion has offered itself to me. There’s nothing dramatic to be said about it. There’s no three-step process. You simply have to accept love. You have to decide whether or not you really like unconditional love.

I think it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. The more you think you earn love, the more you realize you’re undeserving of it. The more you try to earn it, the further from it you slide. It’s like the more you struggle to escape from quicksand, the further entrapped you become. But the more you realize you don’t deserve love, the more thankful you become for unconditional love. Perfect people don’t need unconditional love. But I guess the good thing is, none of us is perfect.

Nothing spectacular. Nothing groundbreaking. But harder than it sounds. To accept unconditional love. To open oneself up to the idea that you’re not perfect. That sometimes you’re really just a giant ass. You’re a bitch. You’re pathetic and petty and angry and bitter. You don’t deserve love. But you still have to accept it. Because somehow, somehow through the mystery of that grace, that’s the only way you can be healed. The only way you can have hope for change.