If you know me at all, you know that I can suppress my emotions like no other. I have them; they are there, but a very lucky few get to witness them. And that's not to say that I don't express emotion at all. I get excited and you can tell when I'm happy. I'm really good at showing anger and frustration. But if you want anything deeper than that, you're gonna have to dig.
And for a while now, I've been trying to figure out what about me, made me incapable of embracing those emotions, whether they were love, or hurt, or sadness. I wanted to know how I could allow myself to express those feelings without having to open myself up and make myself vulnerable. And of course, I haven't figured out a way to do that, because it's not possible. Vulnerability is kind of the backbone to deep emotion. And I'm still learning how to use it.
But this realization did not help me solve my initial problem. I wanted to know what made others so much more likely to find love in all capacities than I felt like I was. I saw people around me falling in love and when you see that so often, it's hard not to want it for yourself. But the problem I was facing was the fact that I was equating love to romance. They are not always the same. I saw roommates and friends with their significant others and I would think about how happy they must be and how much love they must have in their lives. And it's true that they have much more romantic love, but that does not mean that I had a deficit of love in general.
There are four types of love, as established by the Greek culture and language. Eros, the most commonly acknowledged love, is romantic. Philia is platonic, or friendship love, Storge is familial love, and Agape is Christlike love. Movies, books, and other media tell us that Eros is the most desirable of these types of love. Love has become synonymous with romance. But Eros is also the most temperamental kind of love. It rarely has a strong base unless tied to another kind of love as well. Philia is developed based on emotional connection, Storge on family ties, and Agape on the unconditional love for a person based on the knowledge that they are worth loving because Chirst loves them. All of these types of love are strong and necessary and powerful.
I'm trying to figure out how to write this without sounding whiny or desperate. I want to express how I feel but I know how it sounds. The thing is I want to be in love. I see it everyday in my coworkers, my friends, and my family. I see how happy it can make someone. I want someone to love me and I want someone to love. I want to go on cute dates and hold hands and kiss. I want all of those things, but somehow I've connected wanting those things in my mind with weakness. I've gone the overwhelming majority of my life without them and somehow I connect wanting them to submission or dependence. I have lived so much of my life single that I have taught myself that wanting anything else is almost disrespectful to all of the blessings I have in my life right now. And I link feeling this way to shame.
We tear ourselves down when we don't have aspects of Eros in our lives as if it is the pinnacle of love. And then we look for the things that we think might be preventing us from attaining Eros and we minimize those key characteristics of our lives. We look at ourselves and ask "what qualifies me to be loved? and what disqualifies me?" as if love is something you earn based on your looks or personality. We belittle and neglect the other kinds of love in our lives in our search for Eros. We forget that the lack of a romantic relationship in our lives does not make us any less than others. We assume that if we do not have it, we must not be worthy of it.
The truth is nothing can qualify you to be loved. It's not something you earn and it's not something you necessarily deserve either. Everyone is worthy of love in some way. Love is not a gift, but a choice made by yourself and others. Discover all the reasons to love yourself. Find the people in your life that love you for you. That love might be Eros, Storge, Philia, and hopefully Agape, but once you find it, hold on to it for dear life.
