from nails to love

Nails! I hate them. Not the rust covered ones that fill glass bottles that once contained jams of various sorts. Not those that are battered into wood with a hammer, holding things together. Not those that held Jesus Christ on to that cross, the nails that were covered in his blood.

Nails! The ones that grow on your fingers and toes. Those ghastly things that are grown to the most disturbing lengths. I keep my nails short; cut them constantly, even though at times it makes my skin bleed. The feel of some one's sharp edged nails on my skin makes me shudder, and more than once I’ve been tempted to slice them off.

When I went to Jaffna for four days, I realized on the second night, that my nails needed cutting. There was no way to find a nail clipper or pair of scissors and they weren’t astonishingly long to make it seem like an emergency. So I did something I hadn’t done for years. I bit my nails off. And it was only then that I felt free and in a way cleaner.

To switch topics, my grandmother recently asked me if I was in love. “In love or just love?” I asked with a grin. So she asked me if I loved anyone, in particular, that is. So yes, love, that clichéd, cheesy thing that makes even the strongest of men fall at the feet of a woman. That makes even the most intelligent woman lose all senses when face to face with a man.

So what makes liking someone different from loving someone? And the love for one way different from the love for another? Why is love sometimes so suffocating, and at other times so freeing? What makes us love, what makes us worthy of someone's love?

I don’t have the answers, and I don’t want them. And honestly, does any one know the answers? And would they actually want to know them?