What is it?

Stringing madness. An inferiority complex. A clichéd, struggled kiss in a summer rain on a city sidewalk. Grandiose? Multi-syllabic.

A truculent desire to rip humanity’s vulnerability from their throats, which persistently mislead with humor and misdeed.

A gentle susurration pressed into my cotton pillowcase. A fear of flight.

No.

My fight for love is not poetic. It does not want to be noticed. It does not need to be spoken about. No monumental or maudlin displays.

It simply wishes to be lived.

How often are we stuck in a purgatory of stagnation? We come up with words like “saudade”, which means we long for something that has been loved and lost; a decaying, former lust. We pray for change. For society to wise up on its own. We plant trees in hopes of new growth. We remain obstinately optimistic.

But optimism and pride never delivered us to the doorstep of truth. Not once.

Words and feelings never have, either.

I’ve done this wrong my whole life. Pleasantly grateful for each opportunity to learn. Degrading my human worth based on the lack of others’ affection or approval.

Love is not about us, while being entirely about us. It doesn’t want to be praised or pedestaled so high it’s out of reach. It doesn’t want to be looked upon by sympathetic and horrified eyes like a beached and bloated creature.

It wants to be lived.

Caviling each other’s motives with complete disregard for their capacity to love. Commending our intelligence when we make decisions that break us from the bonds of romantic or familial anguish. The human condition.

To live love is to be love. Not to find it or create it. Not to write about it or decorate it. It’s not apocryphal like we believe. It is because we want it that we cannot have it.

Love has always been there. It just doesn’t fit the mold of our ego’s view. Askew in our perceptions, it is like the man who couldn’t fathom three dimensions because he lived in two.

It is not a decree of promise, nor recordings of random acts of kindness. Love is only asking that you stop talking about it and start doing it. To cease being a demimonde of lovers and become warriors of life. Proliferators of humanity and the ethereal cosmic entity that encapsulates our silly stories and lofty ideals. Not to be so serious all the time, but to know that the only reason why we all struggle with winning love is because we fight for it all wrong.

We get to choose how and why we fight for love. So many styles, all the while, some are successful, some needlessly tormenting. While love should be appreciated, it never needs to be more than in the moment, radiating floridly, with impression not intent.

If I am love and live like I am love, then I never have to find it. Living love is a fight each day when pangs of animosity and malign atrocities tear up entire cities, render human hearts to tenderized meat, pumping life through us we wish we didn’t have to wake to see.

But there’s bravery in living love, which is why it is a fight for which I will armor myself, will never give up on, no matter how many times I think I might.

A fight is only a good fight if it is done right.