When Love Hurts, Remember This

Love is not one pluck of the harp, echoing through the empty room after the finger leaves the string. It is not the finger that plays the string. Love has no limit or mortality.

Love is the harp that plays itself, eternally — a song the ears do not tire of, a song you do not have to chase from wall to wall, a song you understand without explanation.

We move through life in gentle increments. We sit before one billion orchestras. In order to show up to the eternal music of love, we first strip ourselves clean.

It feels like loss.

Relics and petals hang from our elbows & we wear tired, tattered eyes for weeks at a time. I am sorry for the thunderstorms that will roar through you in the process of clearing. This is space-making. This is sowing season.

I know that it hurts. I know that you want to hold onto this month’s favorite song forever. I know that you are tired of being plucked and pruned like a garden. I know that you want a love that does not leave.

Look at you. See what pain has done to your soil. You have so much space for seeds. Seeds turn into music. When you enter a room with your whole self open, every person in that room sheds a seed in you.

Letting the roots of everyone else you encounter settle in your belly isn’t always comfortable, but it is where you connect. There will be more pain. Pain, my dear, is flowers growing inside of you. But there will also be joy. There will be the love that doesn’t hurt like this. The love that makes all of the other pain feel like joy too.

So love your mess. Love the empty spaces. Love the pieces of you, shedding to the floor as you walk.

They are turning back to seeds. Strangers who enter the room of your life with their whole selves open will plant you in their bellies. Radiant blossoms are growing in your wake.

For every second you feel dark, the whole earth brightens its light to guide you. You are safe in the reckoning. Love hurts so that you know how to find it.