"You get what you give" is a lie.
A better way to phrase it to me: "Without expectation, give what you truly want out into the world, only then, will you get what is meant for you. It's not always a fair trade, but always returned in abundance. "
Even in the darkest and saddest moments I feel the lure to love. Not to find something that will fix or complete me, but to feel that soft crashing wave of giving so much of your heart that it hurts from overuse. This is how I know I am here and meant to love and give and stay open to all that is.
It may not look pretty. I often see love less as something beautiful in the classical way. I lean towards love that is messy because humans are messy. It is layers and layers of etching through the soot and dirt that has accumulated over time. Childhood alone is responsible for so many of the restraints and shackles we build around our capacity to receive love. Yet, why? Never, do I have the urge to hold my love in and horde it?
Mine is a blanket of beating bleeding love that flies in the wind, whipping and snapping wildly. I don't even remotely feel the need to pull it in, or roll it up for myself. My love of self was a stranger until recently. I think I've finally realized that there are so many aspects of life that are quite different than what we've been taught.
I was indirectly taught that everything is black or white, or mutually exclusive. If you're a "good girl" you are never bad. If you are a bad girl or "naughty girl" you can't be good again. So too, was all things I believed as a small child. Then, things get muddy. I saw adults who had the "answers" get lost and do things I knew instinctually were off path. I witnessed injustice and death and loss.
What I think: You get what you get. There's no universal rule of justice and fairness in love. But, when your own heart is full, giving is the real "get."
So many of my heartbreaks that shook me were hugely important. I had to learn the cost, the price and the risk of giving so much. Often I gave so much to the wrong ones. Often I received nothing because I couldn't if I didn't believe I should. None of the rules applied, as I was taught, none, except mutually exclusivity. If I have dark thoughts, if I didn't shine enough or work enough to keep my parents in love, or my mother in my life, I knew. I knew with a child's mind that I was broken, and defunct and not worthy of the love I knew existed.
So I gave. I gave with reckless abandon, and I pushed away if my big heart, and kind eyes fooled the receiver enough. They must be wrong, or foolish so I let them go. There is an entire wake of people piled and filed in one of two groups: Those confirming my self-belief or threatening it. Both types ended by my own saboteur expertise or my self-effaced rejections.
Unlearning such patterns is impossible with out the sight of your soul. I am in a state of learning again. I am a child, free and open to the idea that there are no specific buckets within which I fall. I am a hodgepodge of all that I have seen, done, heard, written and read and I live on.
I know that judging is not my place. I love. You say you love, but you speak so loudly of love that insecurity screams through. In the kind of love I have and give it is quite. It whispers and sways to those that are worthy of knowing about it. My love is fierce in protection or fragile in doubt, but never does it need to be used to manipulate, keep score or seek others to congratulate me.
Love is what so many say they understand, and yet they act and speak without it. They push and shove to make it work and judge those who don't. What if love changes? What if the soul is a kaleidoscope of changing elements that are beyond a box, description or word you would use. Love like I create and hope to receive is soft and content and constant.
I give you full permission to pit yourself against my heart and me. I've let go of your definition of acceptance because the rules under which you are ruled make no sense to me. I don't hurt the ones I love the most because it's "safe." Nothing is safe. I don't expect that I shall be loved based on a picture in magazines, or a façade a small town prescribes for mass production to only raise and ruin children to be just as you are, not who they are.
I have finally given myself permission to give love freely... to me, to those I choose and to care less what anyone thinks "it" should look like. The one thing I have learned is the more I learn to love fully, the more I realize not many do.
But when you find others, those seekers of truth, defenders of love and nurturers of the sacred and difficult path of compassion, they feel like a family your entire life was leading you to. As for those who claim ownership of a definition or the "right" way to love, they will no doubt get what they give.
I will focus my efforts and journey on those strong enough to receive real love. Or the even stronger, are those who worked so hard to get to this place of loving so much that all we see are the people and places to GIVE it.
They will get what I can give.