My mother was never in love with my father.
“We didn’t concern ourselves with “love” the way your generation does,” my mother said.
We are too consumed by love, with falling in love, being in love, wanting to be loved. Every morning as my train moves across the Williamsburg Bridge, I see the graffitti on a building that reads “Love Me. Love Me.” It makes me smile, but it also makes me sad as it reminds me of broken hearts- not just mine, but of people I know.
I was telling a friend that I want to be in love, that I don’t want my mother’s kind of love, the kind you grow to feel without much thought. Despite her seemingly satisfied self and contentment with my father and her grown children, I rather have the heart breaks than be just satisfied and not “in love”.
And yet who defined this idea of falling in love? If no one ever bothered defining it, we wouldn’t be so consumed by it, and there would be no broken hearts. After all, how can a heart break?
“Love Me. Love Me”. It’s a demand we make when really, we should be loving ourselves first.