Loveburn

Collectors Quest

Love is transformative. It's beautiful and perfect. Like sunlight. It powers life. It brightens everything. It warms everything. It makes everything sparkle.

Just like sunlight, too much love can burn you.

When do you love someone too much? When you love them more than your needs, your need for friends and connections other than them, your need for emotional or financial stability, your need for safety and freedom from fear, your need for physical health. You love your kids too much when your life feels not worth living when they leave you. You love your spouse too much when you can't bear that they think anything bad about you, and you have to make them stop. You love your parents too much when you put their needs before your own or your kids'.

You love someone too much when you can't let them hurt, when you need to save them from everything, even if that means hurting and losing yourself.

You love someone too much when you can't think of anything but them. Birthdays remind you. Sundays reminds you. Grocery store aisles remind you. Movies, songs, books, pictures, colors, food, cups, necklaces, pants, carpet, sunlight, rain, snow, your calendar, what your boss said this morning, your neighbor's dog, your best friend's mom, the facebook newsfeed, the flower in the corner of the ad for return address mailing labels, everything, everywhere, always reminds you. Even when you close your eyes and all you hear is the sound of your own breath in the dark, even that reminds you.

You love someone too much when you can't forgive them for anything, because they hurt you that deeply, because you wanted that much for them to fill you up with themselves and their irreplaceable love, and they didn't. You love someone too much when you constantly expect them to change and refuse to except them and their behavior, for the same reason.

When you love someone too much, you use them, you depend on them, you need them. You can't and won't live without them, even if you wish you could and would.

That's loving someone too much.

And when you've loved someone too much so much that now your life is shriveled or even the briefest exposure burns and yet you'll stand there and soak them in, thinking, this is love, that's when you cannot love them. That's when you have to live without your light, your love, until the burn fades.