*** The first three books in my six-part dystopian series have officially made their way out into the world! Check them out!
For the sake of blogging, self-exploration, and contemplation, I’ve been slowly making my way through answering questions from this list
Today’s Question: Excluding romantic relationships, who do you love?
Can I skip this question? I don’t like it. It makes me oddly uncomfortable. I suppose that’s because I really don’t have a confident answer.
I don’t like the word “love.” I feel like its connotations are idealistic and maybe even fictional. I admit, I’m a ‘Scrooge’ or ‘Jaded’ when it comes to that word. I definitely care about people, sometimes a lot more than I wish that I did. I suppose that I love my family. Sometimes I feel numb to any attachment I “should” have to them, but then when they say or do something hurtful, I feel it deeply, for days, and often throughout the nights as well in the form of nightmares. If someone I don’t care much about says or does something that causes me to feel crappy, I can shake it off a lot easier than I can when it comes to family members. So that’s “love” … right? Caring about what people say, do, and think on a level that goes far beyond any conscious choice that I make to care? Feeling their effect on you, both good and bad, deep down in the pit of your soul?
I feel that way about close friends, too, especially people that I’ve known for many, many years. They somehow become engrained deep down as a part of me, and that’s both good and bad. It’s good to feel so connected to certain people, as there have been times in my life that I’ve suffered the very depressing loneliness of being close to no one. It can also be bad because sometimes they can say something, do something, or make choices that really cut you deep and those wounds take a very long time to heal. I suppose “love” is literally, by definition, supposed to make us vulnerable, but I’m a very sensitive, very observatory person, and that means that I don’t enjoy or find any fulfillment or satisfaction out of being vulnerable. It’s just too overwhelming. So yeah, I suppose I love my family and close friends, but I STILL try to maintain very prominent boundaries, and I STILL sometimes can’t avoid getting hurt. Sometimes, love in any form can really suck.
Kell Frillman - Author 