When Love Is a Battlefield

"To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour--the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two. Perhaps I was no longer in love but I remembered." --Graham Greene, the Quiet American

There is a pine tree next to the drive outside our brick house on Tiffany. Its branches dip down to create a little shelter on the inside, and there is a bough conveniently low enough and sturdy enough to support the weight of anyone who wishes to perch, dry and unseen from the world. In the days before the tree was trimmed of its shielding skirt there was a girl of nine or ten who took refuge on that bough, the cracked and peeling bark coming away underneath her sneakers like shingles on an aging rooftop, a book in her lap which would later have to be shaken free of dust and thin brown needles. Like the bird that shared her name, the girl found certain peace and solid strength in the tree, and if she closed her eyes long enough she could pretend she was in a forest somewhere far away and soon she would hear the urgent clattering of hooves as her prince arrived to carry her away from this fortress of solitude. But there was the buzz of lawn mowers and engines instead of horses. Shouts of neighborhood children and dogs barking woke her from her day dream and sliced its way back into reality, where there was still elementary school and homework and boys oozing cooties.

It was from this tree that I saw my first kiss take place, when my sister and her boyfriend parked their car directly below my perch unknowingly. I watched each of my siblings go through the stages of love and heartbreak, relationships and loss, and always wished I could know what they knew. What was this secret world that took them away from home so often, and took up so much room in their heads and so many tears from their eyes? I imagined that love must be a soft thing; like an embrace or snow falling gently. But it also had a cruel side. It caused tension and aching and sorrow, sometimes for weeks at a time, before another relationship started and the snow fell gently again.

I spent most of my high school life concentrating on another concept that escaped my understanding: my future. Judging from the title of my blog page, you can probably guess that this is still the case. But at least now I have the wisdom to know that this is how it should be. Our future is what we make it, every day, every hour, and if a time machine could be made I am of the opinion that it wouldn't be able to move a single millisecond forward, because that second is not yet created. During high school I focused on that second constantly, always pulling and stretching at that thin transparent space dividing me from my dreams, and wishing to rip it open and let the new, confident future me fall out, shake her wobbly legs, and walk. I wanted to grow up so fast. I wanted to take the world that I saw around me and shake it by the shirt collar, forcing it to see me and know that I existed.

But, like most young flames, when faced with separation from the things that gave me life and fed my resolve, I flickered and went out. College was a big smudged question mark the Riddler had smeared across the sky to taunt Batman with. It was the castle that you never actually knew whether it contained the Princess or not, but to hell with it you just wanted to procrastinate that Senior Thesis with more Mario time. I had been away from home before, but never for so long and never so little prepared.

On top of this, there was a sudden panic to remember all of the things I wished I had done before responsibility came to actually mean something more than the word that came right before "you're grounded." I mourned the time I would never get with friends, the effort I never put in to some of my classes, and the crazy stunts every high schooler has to have before they graduate. Where was my dyed hair? Where were my tattoos? Where were the pranks where we let loose a herd of cattle into the school or saran-wrapped the principle's car or something equally bizarre? Where was that first kiss and that dance were my date was actually more than just a good friend and saw me as more than just "one of the guys?"

The college girl cries out: "Where is your gratitude? Where are your plans for more time with people you love? What is your hurry? Slow down...slow down" But I didn't slow down. I ran faster, in the opposite direction.

Less than eight months later, I can tell you what a kiss feels like. I can tell you what it's like to go to a party where everyone around you is drunk or drinking but you. I can tell you the precise moment I lost my faith in God, and the precise moment I began to get it back. I can tell you what it's like to want to die. I can tell you how to play a two minute solo in jazz band, give an oral presentation in class without shaking, fall asleep crying, fall asleep laughing, make new friends, lose old ones, buy your own groceries for under twenty bucks, do five loads of laundry with one dryer sheet, scream at a rock concert, and which foods at the caf will make you sick for a week.

I can also tell you what it's like to be in love. It is not quite snow falling gently. It has consequences, and those consequences have the potential to take lives, to ruin marriages, and to cause pain. Mercifully, love has many faces, and the other kinds of love: friendship, empathy, and selflessness...these have the potential to save lives, fix marriages, and heal the deepest wounds.

Whoever said love is a battlefield (I think a cheesy seventies singer) meant every word. It has just taken experience for me to discover that I'm not Joan of Arc saving the troops. I'm not Tosh, Helen Z. Smith's bad-mouthed and fiercely lovable heroine of the ambulance drivers who died in a blaze of glory. I'm no Isi the Goose Girl and I'm certainly not Elizabeth I or Esther or Cosette. In Helen's world I'm most closely related to Smithy, the woman who survives war by refusing to fight it any longer. Or Helen of Howard's End, who only asked for peace. Or Margaret who gave up Peter for the sake of sanity. I'm Eponine, Sarah Lumb, and Jane.

The point I suppose, is that I'm still here.

Perhaps I'm not who you remember I was last year. Perhaps if you knew me and judged me you would not like me. But I still believe in a God who never meant life to be so hard that it could be impossible. I still find humor in the absurd. I still have a respect and love for the people who daily remind me that the next twenty four hours have meaning. And I still hope for the day when I can take my sword and shield and enter the battlefield again, a wiser woman than I ever hoped to be sitting in a tree dreaming of castles and knights.

But not yet. Not yet.