This Is What It Means To Truly Love Someone
Love is dedication, despite the pain and the empty dark, despite the fact that the shiny edges are gone and the clean bright newness of it all has faded to a more subtle, deeper glow.
By 
Megan Andrew
The creaking old limbs of the house echo the weariness of your heart, and the darkness embraces you every night like a warm blanket, soft but smothering.
Sleep won’t come, and when it finally does, you’re tossed into a deep angry sea of scattered dreams, and the jagged, broken faces of malevolent shadows whisper dark secrets that haunt you through your days.
The birds call in the crisp twilight but your bleary eyes haven’t yet closed through the whole sticky, sleepless night. Hot, prickly tears are your only comfort and your heart is burning with a loss you didn’t even realise you were suffering.
And as you gaze at him and the sunlight streams over his sleeping eyes, you realise that you love to hate him and you hate to love him but you love him all the same. And the repulsive stinking room of love and bodies angers you and fill you with despair and makes you love all the harder and all the brighter.
What does it mean when the slightest provocation infuriates you? When your heart beats in reverse? When there is no mystery anymore? No shining magic that lights up his eyes, no sparks that used to fly so readily between you, encircling you, captivating you, drawing light into your lives.
Does it mean it is over? Or do you realise that this is just how it is, this is just how it gets, and this is just what you live through? It’s what you choose to bear, knowing that despite it all, the love is there. That it will never leave, no matter what.
Do you realise that sometimes this is simply what you will feel, in the cool and in the dark and when you roll over and your lonely hand clasps the white, empty bed sheet, cold to the touch? That this is what it’s all about, even though it hurts to love so much, and hurt so much, and feel so much.
And that even though giving up seems stronger, maybe not giving up is harder, and hurts the most but also gives the most and makes you strong. Maybe holding on and trying and believing in your love is harder, and more worthwhile? Maybe this is truly what makes love love?
We pass each other in the night, crossing through each other’s splintered shards of dreams, and find each other again in the dawn.
We reach out but we don’t always understand each other, we try and we fail, we scream and shout, we hurt and we hate. But we keep trying again, because this is love.
Love is dedication, despite the pain and the empty dark, despite the fact that the shiny edges are gone and the clean bright newness of it all has faded to a more subtle, deeper glow. The adventure and the romance is replaced with a stronger hold on your heart; a deep love, a hearty love, a solid love. A love that will never leave, but keeps on giving again and again and again. 
