How do you define love?
It’s been a whole year since I had the luxury of moving across the country, away from the warm embrace of small-town life. From farmland life to a bustling multilingual city, my life has changed in more ways than I could have ever predicted — notably, in my definition of love. In this day and age, there is much discourse about how one should define friendship and love. Some argue the importance of village over all else; others conclude that protecting peace is the true sign of growing wiser. Having changed my geographical space has helped me come to terms with the fact that my own view of love may have been clouded by the definitions of those around me. Talking with those going through the same change has been insightful, but a little frightening, if I’m being honest. First year of university is like that, or so I’m told. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and has been raised under different pretenses, which manifests itself in small, distilled micro-interactions — like the guy in the back of the bar drunkenly asking if you’d like to make out on the couch over there. When you answer in the negative one time too many, you can conclude with rather sturdy certainty: if you’re a “frat bro,” I’m sure you’ve never thought about your own definition of love beyond what it could mean for the member between your legs.
Love, through media, is often depicted as an all-consuming force, one that transcends life and time itself — like love from all the Disney movies, from the heroines and heroes of our childhood. Imagine Hercules and Meg chasing after each other through life and death, or Rapunzel, locked away yet endlessly curious about the world beyond her tower. Other depictions include long tales of arduous love, where trials and tribulations reach lovers and friends alike — think of the Shakespearean love tragedies we were forced to read in English class, where through bored yawns you learned tales of tragedy and triumph. While my own definition has been molded by these fantastical versions, it is only recently that I’ve been able to take a long, quiet look at my own definition of love.
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Love has always been a difficult subject for me. Not because I have never known love, but because love was always the default in my family. Love was always expressed, some would say even demanded. I was raised by two therapists — one specializing in trauma and marriage and family therapy, and the other a mindfulness-based art practitioner. I was taught what love was: patience and kindness and care for one another. And what it was not: abuse, lies, and other horrific things. But no one ever taught me what that looked like on me. While our lives as a loving family appeared functional — and for the most part, they were — there were noticeable cracks in the paint of my childhood that prevented me from knowing love without condition.
My childhood was a happy one, albeit short. From age six, I was able to cook, clean, and do laundry for the household. Having a mother with severe chronic pain and other disabilities left me, the eldest daughter, to pick up a lot of the slack while my father built out his own counselling practice. Being the only employee, he often worked long hours, leaving me, my mother, and my sister to spend nights together. On days when my mother’s pain became too much, I became the third parent to my younger sister. As her pain increased with each failed treatment, this care for my family became part of my usual routine. Making dinner, doing the dishes, and making sure Dad had a clean shirt for tomorrow started to replace time spent playing with dolls, reading picture books, and having fun outside. It never really bothered me back then — out of necessity, I knew that what had to be done had to be done, and I was the only one who could do what my family needed. For a while, it was empowering to be so capable. But looking back, I can see it as the start of a pattern of unsustainable love, one I have spent years trying to unlearn and reshape into something healthy and feasible for my everyday relationships.
As I am at a stage in my life where relationship formation is at the crux of identity, I have started to think long and hard about how love — platonic and friendly alike — appears in me. I am someone who takes care, no matter what. Help with homework there, a meal made for you here, a kind word after a stressful exam, often. It was always the value I brought to the table — the expectation, the necessity. It was always freely given. It only started to hurt when I realized the world, and those I loved dearly, did not always return love in the same manner — not because they did not love, but because they loved in a way I did not need for that time in my life. My father loved me by providing for me in the only way he knew how. My mother loved me by teaching me hard work, resilience, and creativity. My sister loved me by pushing me to grow in my patience and understanding for those different from me. All skills I value to this day, but skills that should have been developed later in life, not at the tender age of what many consider “Elmo’s prime time.”
Definitions, like most things in life, are fluid. They change with who we are and who we are poised to become. We evaluate and make edits to suit ourselves, like altering clothes after a growth spurt. These days, I feel like my definition of love is getting too tight around the neck. I feel it tugging at my heartstrings, telling my mind it is time for a change.
