i love you i love you i love you by Lara Platman
I have often wondered how love and all its alchemic identities evolve throughout our lives. We are told to use it freely to our neighbours, to our loved ones and especially to love yourself, but ultimately is it the same love? The innocence of love is simply a recognition of decisions and an understanding and longing for the nearest and dearest and often we have no qualms about flirting the word around, yet inherently something is distilled upon our tiny minds that begins to build love to become a word or emotion that defaults as a secret or embarrassment. For me I remember telling my Doggy that I loved him and in the same breath loving chocolate spread. I can’t remember telling my mother and father that I loved them although for me it was obvious that I did. Today I tell my grandma I love her and will on the next phone call tell my parents the same. Along with some friends. Yes I will tell them I love them. And mean what it is to love, in my mind at least. But this change or confidence in the word love... Has it evolved through what I have witnessed and feel or is this always the everydiffering uses of love? Just pipped forty I still feel like I am only now beginning to grasp its meaning from the very different one as a child. Illustration by Alex Judd
Have I only just now turned into something that is not quite an adult? Where cynicism has not yet encroached on my gravitas and experiencing heart ache has occurred only a few times? Am I approaching the adolescence of my being, where everything is exciting? But I just pipped forty? Where does adolescence complete and adulthood make its mark? My parents are on the seventh year of their gap year and they are about sixty five, :) and married for 45 years. Now that is love. And believe me their escapades in a mobile home certainly is not a grown up action... And they are in their silver years. Love is all you need said John Lennon. Yes i think it is. Whatever age, whatever stage of life. Love transcends all timescales and deliverencies of maturity. If only love were a being. It would be my oldest friend and my newest - it is that fluid. And yet. I am still looking for love. That special one, something that I thought in my adolescence, would appear as my lifetime chum, perhaps from the knowledge of my parent’s companionship, I too would make for a duo. But you know. I LOVE to love. Does that count? I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU!
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