Love.

I think about Love and what that means quite a lot.  As a person who has been in a couple long-term relationships and is in one currently you start to realize...and quite quickly that Love is not that of fairy tales.  It is not prince charming sweeping me off my feet, or someone to swoop down and rescue me.  There are days that I think that "happy ever after" would be pretty awesome but I look out the window see my man getting pure joy running around the backyard like a crazy person trying to wear out our dog and that thought vanishes.  The moments where he looks at me and thanks me, genuinely, for reheating left-over spaghetti...from a week ago...makes me realize that love is everyday. 

I look at my parents who after 25 years of marriage divorced. I think it is this experience that really made me start looking at love.  How two people who made it through some major life issues together could fall "out of love".  They were the couple you would always find making out on the couch (much to my teenage horror), the ones who genuinely showed that while not always roses that laughter could cure most things.  How you go from that to "done" made me realize how fragile, how fleeting, how precious Love can be.

On this day of "National Coming Out" I thought of love again.  I thought of one of my best friends not being able to marry the woman who makes her smile.  Makes her happy and fulfilled. 

Of the young gay males in college I RA'd for that would keep me up crying because they didn't want to be different, couldn't fathom coming out to their parent/families/friends.

The teens who are killing themselves because of bullying.  

They were afraid that the Love they felt for someone else would end the love others felt for them.

I thought of my love for family members who, to be completely honest, if we were not related by blood I would have no ties too because they couldn't look past their Love for their God to see that at the core of it all is Love.   His greatest gift.

Love.

4 letters. Though it is what life is made up of.  It has caused both my best and worst times in my life. But at the end of the day I know that I can marry that man out that window.  I can talk about him, and our life at work with no worries.  I can march my ass down the street holding his hand and NO one will look the other way.  It kills me inside that my friends can't do the same.  I am not perfect. I have no idea what actually constitutes "Love" but what I do know what it is not:

Hate.

I am an ally.  Not because of political reasons, not because of some moral compass, or religious shenanigans but because of the look my best friend Jayme has when she looks at her girlfriend....god for that reason, even when she talks about her.  It is like my friend comes to life, she starts to shine.  How anyone can hate that, can deny that, can harass that is beyond my comprehension.

 So I will just go about loving ALL my friends, and all the people they love.  I will continue to love those that are uneducated, misguided and scared.  Because at the end of the day I know that I am 100 million percent better for it.  That this is how we will end homophobia:


Love.




Lacy