What a test it is always, to love another, especially when so many influences abound. From the moment we are born, we are completely taken over by society's definition of what love should be, affecting us on a visceral level as it often confuses us with its norms. Society says that we need one mate, that once we have this person we must be with him or her all the time, that space and mystery cannot possibly be a necessary ingredient to preserving love’s power, and that certainly love of one’s self must remain a secondary thing. Add to these already confusing mandates our personal questions and limitations, and love gets all tangled up in a wild and unforeseen web that manhandles and distorts it into something altogether unrecognizable. Finding the Balance How is it that this most precious thing has the power to torment us at the extreme? It holds us in the palm of ecstasy, keeps us awake at night wondering about it’s contradictory facets, and roots itself in t
Random picks of my published and unpublished creative writing.