Uniquely Loved (or Elegy For A Love)

"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over."

"You look like you just lost your best friend."

A phrase my mother used to address my sulking when I was a child. It's been many years since I've heard the phrase or thought about it, but I heard it in my heart today when I did lose a friend.

The older I get, the fewer unique things I find. Seemingly every idea and product and person is a discontented imitation of something else. Being like "them" is safe and easy and guaranteed to please, but it comes at a cost. Every part of me that I force into another mold is a part of me that must be disfigured and broken to fit a frame not made for me. To imitate others, my most natural affections or "loves" must be denied and scolded into unnatural order for the sake of acceptance and approval. At that moment, that love and all its value is lost.

I've had a friend who is a stubborn love. That love resists the boxes my friends and family want to put it in. It resists the box I have wanted to put it in at times. Sometimes a love persists so long outside a neat category that it becomes its own. Becomes an affection I didn't know existed before. It confuses me at times and I don't understand exactly what it is, but I know some things that it isn't and I know that it is inimitable. In a world seeking contentment by sameness, you may easily learn the worth of uniqueness.

It's no irony then that the greatest thing I learned from this person is to be confident in my "stubborn" loves. A young man that likes to pick ditch flowers while driving backroads or write melodramatic poetry or listen to overly sad folk music is generally encouraged to keep those things hidden, and there are times that he should. But those things shouldn't be broken down and packed away to be forgotten.

Pure affections should not be punished, and those "natural affections" for pure, whole things are a gift from God that he has given to be enjoyed. It's acceptable for those loves to confidently slip out at times, without shame.

Most would probably say that a real friendship shouldn't have to end if it's rooted in real love, but this love would defy that box. If this were the place to explain and convince then perhaps I could do so, but this is not the place.

This is a brief "slip" behind the curtain to glimpse at one of my stubborn loves.

Love is why it has to end, and this is my elegy for it.