what is love?

(NOT a night at the Roxbury ;-) )

There are few songs that I don't get sick of hearing over and over and over again when they become popular on the radio. This is one of them.



"The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson has been a top favorite of mine for well over a year. Sometimes I log in to my own blog when I'm at work, just to hear it on my project playlist, along with some others on the player that I can't seem to get enough of. Evan had a problem with the lyrics & wrote about it last January. But my take is completely different from his. I think this song epitomizes for me the balance between love and codependence. It can go either way, depending on the mindset of the individual listener, but when listened to from a healthy perspective, it's a picture of two imperfect people accepting one another's flaws and being willing to support one another in moving forward, within real life.

My philosophy on love (romantic love, specifically, but not solely) has evolved a lot over the past few years into a surprizingly manageable set of paradoxes. My expectations became less, yet more at the same time; My need to control seems to be under control; some of the things I NEED seemed not to be so necessary, more flexible, and yet I've found more fulfillment than ever in my most recent relationship.

Michael & I spent 10 months, more or less, exploring what a healthy, vulnerable, fun relationship could really look like. We didn't do it perfectly, of course, and weren't always healthy, vulnerable, or fun, but for the majority of the time we were dating, there was a level of intimacy and support that I'd never experienced before. And it was so refreshing!

We entered the relationship with the understanding that we had about a 90% chance of it not culminating in marriage, and that wasn't the emphasis. The focus was the here and now, being present in a relationship without the need for it to last forever and ever and ever (which is how my mind always seemed to work before). So we knew it would end at some point and had considered & evaluated that eventuality a few times in the past months, and this week it became reality. Saturday I got an answer that I wasn't even looking for from my Higher Power, that it was time to end the relationship. Overall, it's been a (mostly) peace-filled process so far.

We spent yesterday afternoon together, according to plans we'd made before the break-up, and at lunch he asked "Do we have a song?" We'd never discussed having a song that was "our song" & I couldn't think of anything. He asked, "Is there a song that makes you think of me?" Being a music lover, and having the need to find a way to make anything I hear somehow relate to my life, an accurate answer would probably have been "pretty much all songs," but the one that came to mind is Jason Mraz's latest "I'm Yours," because he likes it so much. He thought about it & then we got distracted with some other topic. A few minutes later he said "I know! it's 'Just The Way You Are'." I sputtered some of my drink & asked "Billy Joel?!" "No! the Rogaine song" he said, "You told me a while ago that you like me the way I am, and every time I hear that song I think of you."

And it occured to me that I had come full circle this year and that this relationship had embodied exactly what I like about Ingrid's lyrics. Perfectly imperfect people with a whole lotta mutual respect and esteem.

That's what love is to me.