Loving Fully

I took my sibling's cat into my house three days ago. In total, I have known this cat for four days. I can honestly say, with no exaggeration, that in that time I have come to love this cat with a blazing passion. I would die for this animal and cherish every moment I spend with her. If I had a million dollars, I would buy thousands of overpriced cat toys, just to bring her a moment of joy.

I have always loved animals and easily grow attached to them. However, I also feel this way about people. I have had friends that I would have perished for after 1 week, lovers that I would have given my all to after one night. I cannot count the number of people I have pushed away because I felt too strongly, too quickly. They fled the intensity of my feelings.

They were right to run. To love someone so quickly is to love them without knowing them, and that is not true love, merely the illusion of it. A powerful feeling in its own right, to be sure, but powerful does not equal healthy.

Real love is like a flower, slow to grow and even slower to bloom. Sometimes the petals are whisked away by frigid winds, but if you are patient and tender, they will return. But if you clasp the flower, shake its stem, and demand that the petals grow, it will turn to mush in your hands.

That patience is hard for me. I mistake the weeds for roses. I chase gusts of wind hoping them to be tornados there to whisk me over the rainbow. I see the love that I crave wherever I go and chase it just as readily. The fact that doing so is the most assured method of scaring love away is no deterrent to me.

But even if satiated, this craving for love is hollow. It is akin to filling a donut’s hole with whipped cream. It might look and taste good for a time but leave it out for an hour and it melts away. Love from another means nothing if you don’t love yourself.

I have spent the past two years alone, examining what it is to truly love oneself. Not because I hope to replace the thrill of loving another with that of caring for myself, but because to understand how I love others, I must understand how I love myself. It’s hot and fiery, inconsistent but predictable.

All I know for sure is that I must slow down without holding back. I cannot allow my fear of being too much prevent me from showing my authentic self to those I meet. This makes no sense to me, and I instinctively shut down. It’s better than feeling too hard.

I feel as if I’m being sucked into a whirlpool. Every time that I have loved, I have come out the other side shattered, smashed to pieces by the intensity of my own emotions. Avoiding that crash is safer and easier.

At the same time, fighting one’s own feelings hurts. It feels like I am squishing my heart into a box and locking it tight. That is no way to live. But when I love my cat, she loves me back. Or bites me and runs away, but I appreciate that sort of open communication.

And so, I allow myself to feel to the extreme when it comes to pets. I run with my dog and play hide and go pounce with my cat. I laugh and cry with them to my heart’s content.

When I am with animals, I do not have to hide how I feel. That is why I love them.