Love Is Not A Sprint

Posted on January 4th, 2016

Posted by Janne Robinson

Sometimes my brain kills love.

I’m a thinker, not a doer.

I’m a dreamer, a lover–in the clouds. I analyze–try to fit all the puzzle pieces in place before I begin or even know what the puzzle is.

Sometimes, I want love so badly, I don’t kiss long enough to know.

I don’t wait before I throw romanticism and expectations prematurely, excitedly, carelessly on the heart before me.

I have an unsaturated thirst for love that I am proud of.

But sometimes my brain puts out the spark, the magic, interrupting the flow by dousing buckets of logic and question onto a moment.

Some of this is because I am emotionally intelligent and aware of what moves in and out and speak it freely from my heart.

It’s also a defense mechanism–sometimes, wanting to know if it’s safe to open before I know that there is in fact something to open to.

I want to figure it all out. Breathe clarity. Open in safety. Skip the vulnerability, the grey, the uncomfortable–the not knowing–and be able to fall in love in security–assurance–protected.

It is a strength and an insecurity.

I want the wave but I do not want to fall.

I want to know there are arms to catch me at the bottom before I leap and I do not deserve this.

We must leap and then see if love catches us back.

When we are thinking we are not living from our heart.

My brain declares and knows she wants love.

Yet my heart is still wading in the shallow waters of you seeing what she thinks.

She asks, “Do we want love? Do we want love with this man, this heart?”

And my brain is quick to reply, “Yes we want love–we live for love.”

It isn’t brave to analyze.

It is brave to feel.

It is not courageous to lie beneath brown wooden beams at two am and talk till we are dizzy–it’s cowardly, it’s safe.

What is brave is to show up willing to not know, willing to fall face first. Willing to be wrong, willing to be hurt, willing to be accepted.

So dearest brain–quit killing love.

Shut up so my heart can hear itself think.

Let her catch a breath.

Love is not a sprint.

I will likely never turn my brain off and be completely present. I love to chew on this life with my thoughts, but I am aware today that if we operate too much from upstairs, that we miss the succulence of the unraveling–we miss hearing the heartbeats at our finger tips.

Images by Morgan Stone Grether (@grether) http://www.grethershot.com/

Comments