Loving fearlessly

On never giving up on love

“True love doesn’t exist.”
I’m so shocked by this statement that I stop crying. “W-what?” I stammer, dismayed. “What do you mean? Don’t you love Dad?”
My mom chooses her next words carefully. “What your father and I share is better than love. It’s a friendship that’s based on mutual respect. Love is an invention of moviemakers and songwriters. It’s not real.”

I’m fourteen. It’s a grey day in October, and my sort-of boyfriend – let’s call him Carl – is due to arrive in half an hour. I just told my mom that I don’t want to see him anymore because I don’t love him. To tell the truth, I don’t even like him; he’s needy and clingy, and odd. He’s also nineteen years old.

We met in the spring at church. Carl is the organist, and my friend and I are playing the flute. The choir director has recruited all three of us to accompany the choir for the special service that will be held for confirmation. Both my friend and I have a crush on this older boy who seems charming and worldly; when he shows interest in me, it feels like I have won a prize, because I’ve been chosen.

He starts visiting me at home, and my entire family falls in love with him. Sorry, not love (since it doesn’t exist) – they really like him. My dad, a shy and introverted man who works extremely long hours and is too exhausted to have a social life finds in Carl a like-minded friend whom he enjoys talking to and watching movies with. My twelve-year old sister thinks he’s cool because Carl has a skateboard and snowboards, and he talks to her like an equal and not a little kid. Who knows what my mom sees in him – her motivations are as inexplicable to me then as they are now.

At first I’m flattered by all the attention Carl lavishes on me. He has a motorcycle, and I feel like the coolest chick in town riding behind him. He is artsy and paints the door to my room in funky colours and patterns. He brings me romantic little gifts, like a single magnolia blossom that he brought from the city he lives in during the week, because spring arrives three weeks earlier there than in my cold corner of the world. He introduces me to bands and movies I’ve never heard of before, and talks enthusiastically about London, a city I’ve never been to but would love to visit.

But Carl is also jealous. Moody. Melodramatic. He starts telling me that he loves me, and when I don’t say it back he gets angry. He hints heavily at suicidal thoughts, saying one time when he is in one of his moods that he was driving his bike in the rain, “and if there had been more wet leaves on the road and I’d only gone a little bit faster, then–”
I’m still only fourteen.

I’m at a loss at what to do. This relationship has gotten way too heavy and complicated for me. I’m scared that he might kill himself if I break it off, but I hate spending time with him. Luckily he’s at school during the week in a city two hours away from me, but he comes home every weekend, and semester break is looming on the horizon. He will be off for eight weeks, and I’m dreading it. Luckily, two of those weeks I will be away, on summer vacation with my family.

The relief I feel when we leave town for our family vacation is indescribable. Two weeks without his oppressing presence! Two weeks without feeling guilty about not being able to give him what he wants from me. Two weeks of not having to worry that he might want more than holding hands. We haven’t done more than that, since I’m determined to wait with sex until marriage (I don’t want to commit a sin), and I have thus far managed to ward of his clumsy attempts at kissing me. By now I’m revolted by him, and the thought of having to kiss him makes me want to puke.

We’re spending the first week in Amsterdam, and have planned to go to Paris for the second week. A few days in, my parents start talking about how much they miss Carl, and how handy it would be to have him here since he speaks French, a language none of us understands. “You know what?” my mom says one evening with a mischievious glint in her eyes. “Call him and see if he’d be willing to come! I bet he would.”
”What?!” I yelp, in disbelief. “No! I don’t want him here!”
I’ve tried to tell my parents how trapped Carl makes me feel, but they didn’t listen. I’m the resident drama queen who always overthinks everything – I should just stop being so difficult and be grateful that a man likes me so much.

They make me call him and extend the invitation to fly to Paris and join our vacation. I’m devastated, but unsurprised when he eagerly accepts. “Where is he gonna sleep?” I ask my parents. We are camping, my parents sleeping in our VW van and my sister and I sleeping in a tent. I imagine that all four of us will share the van and Carl gets the tent, but my mother has a different idea. My younger sister is to sleep in the van with them – and Carl and I get the tent. “No, absolutely not!” I protest in horror, but to no avail. A few days later we pick him up, to spend a week together in the city of love.

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I don’t remember those nights in the tent. I’m almost certain that nothing happened; but since I can’t remember, I can’t be sure. All I know is that I felt extremely alone and abandoned by my own family during that time. Two months after the vacation my mother made the shocking revelation that true love didn’t exist, a possibility that was too horrifying to contemplate. I was dreaming of real love, desperately wishing for a knight in shining armour to rescue me from this nightmare my life had become. I didn’t know anything about saving myself then; love would save me. It had to be real.

Four months after my mom’s bombshell revelation that love didn’t exist I finally broke it off with Carl, and in a big show of hurt pride he pulled up in his mom’s old Ford, stormed into the house with an empty cardboard box, and swept from room to room, gathering his multiple belongings. On his way out he called to me over his shoulder: “You’ll never see me again!” Meant to wound, his remark was the greatest gift he could have given me.

True to his word, we barely saw him from then on. My family was mad at me for removing Carl from their life, even though that had never been my intention. I wanted him out of my life; they were welcome to continue hanging out with him. However, that didn’t happen, and they blamed me. While their disapproval hurt, the relief at having him out of my life was exquisite. For the first time in almost a year I could breathe again.

Contrary to what my mom had told me, I did fall in love. Five months after the end of my unhealthy relationship with Carl I fell in romantic love for the first time with a nice boy. We ended up staying together for two-and-a-half years, the majority of which I was sure we would get married. It didn’t work out that way, but it was a beautiful first love, and I still think fondly of him.
There haven’t been many men; I can count the men I’ve loved on one hand and still have fingers left over. I was lucky enough to find my true love early in life, and even luckier that I still have him by my side to this day.

But I have been in love many times. Romantic love, unrequited love, platonic love, sisterly love, friend-love, female love, loving my husband’s children, loving my grandchildren, finding a soulmate in my niece, loving at least a dozen dogs (and every dog I ever have and ever will meet), loving women I’ve only spent a week with, loving people for a day or a year or a lifetime.
I’ve loved someone enough to let them go, I’ve loved people more than they have loved me, I’ve fallen in and out of love with strangers just for one special, sacred moment.

I’m so happy and so sad that my mom was wrong. Happy because love is the most powerful force in the world, and I’m basking in it, surrounding myself with it, lavishing it on the ones that are important to me. Sad because – well, something made her say it. Either she was lying to me because she didn’t want me to break up with Carl (which would be messed up), or she really doesn’t believe in it, or, and that’s my guess – she’s too scared to let herself love fearlessly and without abandon.

Loving someone is always a risk. They may not reciprocate, or they may fall out of love, or you may lose them. Love always comes with pain – one doesn’t exist without the other.

But the alternative is so much worse. What’s life without love? It’s bleak, cynical, full of bitter resentment and meanness. It’s always expecting the worst and focusing only on the negative parts of a person. I’ve been around that, too; it’s a waste of a life.

I expect to fall in love many more times in my life. Love has surprised me countless times, and I have no doubt that it will continue to surprise me.

The secret to love is simple, but not easy – all you have to do is to be brave enough to let it in. Loving fearlessly is not for the faint of heart; only the ones courageous enough to accept the possibility and certainty of pain will be able to reap the benefits of love.

But the pain is always, always worth the gift that is living a life with love.

After all, I believe that’s the reason we are here on this earth:
to love and be loved.

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Book news:

I have exciting news: you can now pre-order the paperback version of The Homeowner’s Association!
There are several options listed here. I’m also in the process of having it recorded as an audiobook by the amazing Alexandra Button-Bailey who recorded my last book. I love her work and can’t wait to have her bring my characters to life!
Publication day is September 10.