Love as an adult

When you are a kid, love is such a simple thing. You don’t question it, you don’t try to hide it. If you love someone, you don’t hide it from them. However, as kids, many would say, we didn’t really understand what love is. We just felt this something and called it love.

During adolescence, we came to understand love more and more. We realized that love wasn’t a simple, four lettered word. We realized that you can love different people in different ways. And we learned that loving someone and being loved by them are two completely different things. We also learned that people label and categorize love. Love was no longer just love. It was love for your parents, love for your teachers, love for your pets, love for books or films or food, and romantic love. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to just love. You also had to feel the right kind of love.

Then we became adults and suddenly, love embarrassed us. Love made us afraid. Love became this thing we doubted and questioned and rejected quite often. Love became a secret we had to hide from people. We no longer tell our parents we love them, unless of course it’s a special day. And even then, the ‘I love you’s are often a quick ‘love ya’ or a mumbling of those three words. We never ever tell our siblings we love them because… it’s weird, right?

And when it comes to friends, the L-word just isn’t used. I remember this one time, I was signing Christmas cards with a friend. I usually sign them ‘Love, Shailendree’ and never think twice about this. But my friend hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she cared enough about a friend to sign the card with love. And I thought, as kids, I doubt we would have ever wondered if we actually loved someone when signing a card. They are our friends. We care for them. So we love them. It was just that simple. But now… why were we questioning if we really loved someone?

I recently met my four-year-old cousin for the first time. We’ve never seen each other before except in photographs and a few skype calls. When his mother, my aunt, picked us up from the airport, he didn’t speak to me. And I didn’t expect him to. As a kid, I remember avoiding adults and feeling so shy and embarrassed when they spoke to me. He was also happy to be back with his grandmother, my grandaunt. On our way home, however, we stopped to visit a few museums. And slowly, we started talking and he insisted on holding my hand.

Somewhere during the day, he looked up at me and said, “I love you, Shailee.” And my first thought wasn’t, ‘aww isn’t he the sweetest?’ I actually thought, ‘He has known me for just a few hours. How could he already love me?’ and since he was looking at me, waiting for a reply, I told him I love him too, and I did. And I felt so ashamed of that adult-thought about how one can love another just a few hours after meeting them.

And it made me quite sad that we make love such a difficult emotion. We don’t have to but we do. We run away from love and we are so afraid of it.

While on holiday, I came across this little store that sold various things made out of old records. I have a friend who likes music and as soon as I saw the place, I thought he might like something from there. But then I had those godawful adult-thoughts again. ‘Would he think it weird that I was getting him a gift?’ Sure, we are friends but we weren’t the gift-giving type. We weren’t close friends who spoke everyday. So would a gift imply that there was more than just friendship being added to the mix?

But why should it imply that? Why can’t we be friends and admit we love our friends and express our love without having to feel ashamed or afraid? Why do we always think, ‘but what if he/she thinks I like him?’ So what? So what if someone finds out you love them? Why do you have to be afraid or ashamed? Why do you have to hide what you feel?

Being attracted to someone is such a natural, ordinary thing in life. And yet, why can’t we tell them we are attracted to them or like them or love them without months of wondering and considering and doubting and planning? When my cousin told me he loved me, as innocent as it was, I choked over the ‘I love you too.’ This wasn’t because I was lying about it but because I had nearly no experience in saying those words out loud.

I haven’t told enough people I love them and this wasn’t because I didn’t love people. It’s because something about being an adult means you have to shut up about love. You can express how happy or sad or scared or excited you are. But love? No, love needs to be hidden away.

I was talking to a friend recently about love. And we spoke about the limitations we put on love. And I don’t even understand why these limitations and rules and regulations and conditions exist. Why can’t we just love people?

And we can’t blame society. We can’t blame culture. We need to step away from the regulated love that we consider pure or true. We need to be able to find it in us to look at a person we care for and just say, ‘I love you’ without having to worry about what they’ll think about it or if they’ll feel the same way about us. We shouldn’t have to wait until birthdays or special days to tell friends or family that we love them.

Because it’s strange, isn’t it? We are all grown up now, mature. We understand things we didn’t as kids. We know what love is. We recognize or identify love. And yet, aren’t kids much better than us at admitting their feelings and expressing them? What has adulthood done to us? Why have we been robbed of the ability to just tell people we love them?