What is love?

Love opens a person up to new things, or so I thought. I like country music and Led Zeppelin and poetry because some guy who loved me liked those things - the list could continue on and on. I am who I am because of the people I have loved, because of the people who have loved me. And I'm happy for that. I'm glad for these things.

But I'm beginning to wonder if true love, the best kind, makes us like new things, or if true love makes us more like ourselves, who we truly are. I don't know that I've ever asked myself this particular question, but I'm beginning to see things in myself that make me think that I am my best self when I'm in relationship to another person who doesn't try to change me.

When I was a kid, everything about me was wrong. Trying to change me was a full time job. So I grew up to be an adult who didn't know her ass from a hole in the ground. I didn't know who I was. I was a stranger to myself. And I've spent the last decade or so trying to get to know this person I am, trying to love her as she is, and not as she should be.

Anyhow, part of this struggle is in surrounding myself with people who affirm me without telling me what to do or who to be. It's difficult to choose these people wisely. It's difficult to love myself enough to choose people who treat me well. But somehow in the wondering is the answer. Somewhere in the mess of my own heart is everything I'm looking for.

That's all I got.

I fix things.

Vintage GE Mist-Condition Hairsetter

So in the past year or so, I have fixed the following: my toaster oven, a blender, an aquarium, and a very fancy coffee maker. I believe that in some way, I broke all of them. And when they broke, every single time, I had an absolute freak out. Then I decided to fix them, because what the hell else could I do?

Fixing appliances is a lot less scary than some people think (or maybe a lot of people are like me and enjoy fixing things - I dunno). I'm a clumsy mess sometimes, so am left with the reality that this clumsiness will continually end in some kind of mess.

But in the end, nothing is unfixable. Injuries heal, appliances can be repaired, relationships can be rekindled, and diseases, well, those raw foodies have something to say about that. Perhaps if we admitted to ourselves that things will break, we'd be more open to doing the dirty job of fixing them, sewing up those socks, filling in those holes in the wall, going to see a therapist. Maybe if we acknowledged that we ourselves are all broken, we'd be more okay with the brokenness of other people, and the inevitable brokenness of the world.