On Love and Believing In It

Second grade was when my family cracked down the middle. My parents decided dinner at Baker’s Square was the appropriate venue for dropping the bomb. They told my brother and me that they would be spending “some time apart,” and that information just doesn’t sit well with pie and whipped cream. I knew that meant divorce, maybe even before they did. I wasn’t one of those deluded children who fantasized about the family reuniting to a backdrop of falling rose petals and Celine Dion music. I cried when they told me, but no fasting, no temper tantrums. My dad got an apartment, and arguments were fought over the telephone instead of in the kitchen. That’s all that really changed.

For a long time I didn’t believe in love. The real stuff, not the parent-child, friend-to-friend kind. I guess you could say I was a pessimistic middle schooler, but that compared to other girls who practiced voodoo to make boys like them and you can see how I substituted “pessimistic” for “realistic.”

Love to me was absolutely delusional, and marriage was merely the hangover from a night spent having too much fun. I had reason to support my beliefs. The way I saw it, every relationship ended in death, divorce, or a pint of chocolate therapy ice cream – Ben and Jerry’s makes it, in case you didn’t know. I didn’t have any love around me, not that I could see.

Exhibit A: my mother’s parents. He sat on the couch and she yelled at him and then brought him cigarettes. End: Death. Exhibit B: My father’s parents. He was screwing her best friend and she was mother of six. End: Divorce. Exhibit C: My parents. I guess the “in sickness and in health” clause was elastic, open to interpretation. Then again, she was going to leave him – and the kids – anyway. End: Divorce. The very fact that I have a step-step-great-grandmother (who if I recall correctly had some part in an attempted homicide) should tell you that divorce just runs in my family’s genes like unattached earlobes.

The only people I really knew that truly seemed in love were my aunt Heidi and her husband Adam and they lived at the 39^th parallel in Korea and later, two hours north of the twin cities surrounded by trees. Both dwellings could imply insanity. So I figured they might not count.

Other than that, love could end in a suicide pact – nothing more romantic than swallowing pills by candlelight – or euthanasia, which I just can’t stomach.

For a few years after their separation, I searched for proof of my parent’s marriage. I coveted related items; my best find was a stack of baby blue napkins from their wedding that spelled out the announcement in swirly silver letters. I don’t know what I was really searching for, verification maybe, that I indeed was conceived out of love and not dumped here by a misguided stork. But proof like that isn’t found in physical objects.

Nowadays I wholeheartedly believe in love. Whether he turns out to be my first love of many or my “till-death-do-us-part,” I know that love exists. There’s no other explanation for this peculiar feeling that just sits inside my lungs all day. And the best part is he loves me too. I’m quite the emotional rollercoaster and he’s content to sit along for the ride. Giving without expecting. Caring more for their wellbeing than your own. Wanting to see them more than wanting to see the sun in January. That’s what I know of love. And that’s what I believe in.