Love Hurts

This is another song I heard on the trip home from the cabin -- the Nazareth version -- that's been floating in and out of my consciousness ever since:

Love hurts, love scars
Love wounds, and marks
Any heart, not tough
Or strong enough
To take a lot of pain
Take a lot of pain

I agree that sometimes love hurts, and right now is a prime example. I also know that it scars, wounds and marks. But I don't agree that this only happens with hearts that aren't tough or strong enough to take a lot of pain. In my experience, you've got to be pretty damn tough to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to open your heart to being hurt by a lover -- a lot tougher than you have to be to either choose someone who is safe or to keep a lover at arm's length.

There is a part of me that is proud that I was able to do that this time around -- to let myself be more vulnerable than I've ever been, at least as an adult.

I also have to admit that there's a huge part of me saying: Yeah, and look where it got you:

Love is like a cloud
Holds a lot of rain

This is true, but then, the same is true for life. I remember my mom saying when I was a kid: "Into each life some rain must fall." I never knew where that came from, but I just googled it: It's Longfellow.

But eventually, the sun comes out again, whether with the same love but under fresh circumstances or with a new love. And yeah, the sun can also burn, and that can be painful. But this is the nature of life, and it's not our job to avoid pain, and it's certainly not our job, in the wake of being hurt in love, to stop believing in it:

Some fools think of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
They're not foolin' me

I know it isn't true
I know it isn't true
Love is just a lie
Made to make you blue

Oh it's true alright. It's the truest force there is -- the one that makes all the others possible. Does it hurt sometimes? Hell yeah. But that doesn't make it any less worth doing.

Plus, every time you do it, you learn more about yourself, more about others, more about what you need and what you're able to give. That's the beauty of it, and I reckon that's the reason these lyrics are the most hopeful part of this song:

I'm young, I know
But even so
I know a thing or two
I learned, from you
I really learned a lot
Really learned a lot...