The myth of 'Unconditional Love'

I have been thinking about writing something on this topic for a longer while now. There is quite a lot that I would like to say about it but the feeling of shame always slowed me down.

Why shame? Well, because since I was little I've been told that family members love each other with unconditional love, that said, no matter what is going on you cannot disregard your parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles etc. because you are bonded by blood.
That is why when I am having doubts about this kind of love, I am a bit ashamed of myself. My mother and my father are the ones who brought me to this word, thus I shall respect and love them whatever issues we would be having.

Respect, that, I do. I have respect for every human being. You will never hear me saying 'After what she's done I totally lost respect for her'. I've heard that sentence coming out of my colleague's mouth sometime ago and I was so speechless that I couldn't think of any comeback. Did she murder your whole family? Did she kidnap the neighborhood children for fun and sold them to the circus? Was she going through refugee camps laughing those people in their faces? No, she did not do any of the above. She has done something you did not like so you lost respect for her. Well, don't get me started on that because my opinion here is that you have no life so you need to get the excitement from rather minor mistakes made by others. So please, go and get a life (I respectfully ask you to).

Love, however, is a superior feeling which is very much existing in a sphere of emotional and spititual area. Many times my beloved friend told me that if I can't explain something, it doesn't exist.
I beg to differ.
Love is something you can't give a formula to. It is a feeling, not a word. It must be experienced in order to be recognized. You know it when it hits you. And it can be family, a friend, a partner, a cat. a dish, a season, a song, a book. It is there and it makes you feel something. You look at her/him/them/it and you know it because your chest fills with so many emotions at the same time that your whole body goes through all sorts of reactions. It has this domino effect on you. Your brain thinks your heart is being filled with positivity and brightness, your stomach feels as if it would be filled with butterflies, sometimes it feels like you will have to shed a tear because it's so highly overwhelming. It very often leaves you spechlees and simply brings a smile to your face. And when you get this feeling you carry it around like an egg. Your concern is not to break it or let it down, you very often make vows to yourself to do everything you can not to ever sabotage or destroy it. You hold your breath.

So why do we divide love into contidional and unconditional? The myth is that conditional love needs to be somehow 'deserved' while unconditional love is there and that's it.
I often see it when I hear children ask their parents 'Do you love me?' and parents reply 'Of course we do, we are your parents!'. Is that a reason enough to assume that love is there?
No one deserves nothing 'just because' and I think it is the same with love. When you love someone you constantly have to show up for your part, it's like with work you go to (naturally I agree that love could be the nicest kind of job I ever had to show up for). But I guess you know what I mean.
It is an effort, it is a promise and it should be cultivated. I am not saying you have to 'prove' your love. That feeling is the purest form of caring for something or someone else than yourself. Are you familiar with '1 Corinthians 13'? Just to provide an excerpt:

''Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres''

This is the ssence of love to me and I refuse to think any different. Only now am I beginning to understand it with my heart and not with my mind only. We read this text at school so many times, we have discussed it and I believe there was even an essay that's been expected from us on this topic. And we all wrote it without understanding what is it that we're writing about.
You know it when you finally feel it with your whole body. When you realize you have come across something so fragile, exceptional and beautiful that you can't make a false move. Of course, you will. You are still going to make mistakes but you know they can't be major and you know that when you're wrong you will have to admit it and not make the same mistake again. Make a different one, but don't hurt someone in the same way over and over again because that's where trust, so necessary in order to love truthfully, ends.

How then can you love someone who is constantly and deliberately hurting and humiliating you or your loved ones? How can you love a person that takes advantage on your emotions and manipulates you? Why do you have to love someone who laughs at the way you're living and at hopes and dreams you carry in your heart? Do you really need to love people who say bad things about you, who won't keep in touch with you because you make choices they wouldn't? Would you stay in touch with them if they would be offending people you cary about?
Let me say it loud and clear: no, you don't. It can be your child, your sibling or even your own mother. I hate when mothers use the card of 'I carried you in my womb for 9 months and that's how you repay me?!'.
Excuse me. 'Repay' you? Oh, I thought I don't have to pay anything simply because you and dad decided (well, more or less 'decided') to bring me to this world?

No, wait. Wait. That sounds very ungrateful so let me rephrase it.

I raised a lot of questions in the above paragraph. I would like to add something to it.
You don't need to love the person who is hurting you but you always need to take the other side into consideration. Maybe they are acting that way becaue you have hurt them first? Maybe they are that way because of their own difficult past? Are you sure that you are not the one who is going around being unpleasant but whining about everyone else?
You need to be honest with yourself. And we all make or made mistakes. Probably both. And like I've said before, we will continue on making them. But the key to the case is the word 'delibarately'.
If you hurt someone because you said you don't like cats and cat is their favorite pet, well, you can't do much about it. How could you know? And even if you knew, expressing your personal feeling about those creatures shouldn't be any concern unless you wanted to hurt that person by saying that.
You didn't? Good, go and get yourself a dog or a goldfish and live on! You did? Well, you're just being mean. Although to be offended by a statement like that would aslo show that there is something wrong with the cat- lover..

Back to the subject.
There are two people in my life now who keep on hurting me, more and more it seems, recently. I keep on opening my heart and fighting for honesty between us and they keep on pushing me down, brining me to my knees and tearing my heart apart. That all sounds very dramatic but this is something I am not very keen to make jokes about. I have been trying over and over to open their eyes to some simple facts. I was doing it the easy way and the hard way. I've tried to be nice about it to show that I can be very mature despite my age and I tried to act rude to shake things up.
Nothing has worked. Yet still I am expected to show respect and love because they are my parents. I have tried to convince myself in all ways that I could to let things slip on the account of unconditional love. I would tell myself 'don't look for trouble, they won't be around forever'. But then my mind poked my heart and said: 'First of all, they haven't been around for the past 5 years at all and in the past also not much, if it wasn't for your effort they wouldn't see you at all during the past few years. And second of all- it is THEM who won't be around for much longer. You will (hopefully) outlive them and be as happy as you are right now, cherishing the memories. But if they move away because of silly differences which are normal for most families- it is them who will lose. They will lose you sooner than you will lose them.'
And as poetic, dreamy and romantic an I want to be I also am sure that I'm not plain stupid and that my brain works fine and dandy (well, most of the time).

Am I a good person? I am trying to be. But I know one thing for sure: if someone treats me right I give the good back. If someone treats me wrong I still give good. Until the point when someone aside from treating me badly hurts me and does it on purpose. That I don't like and if it starts to affect my mood, health or well- being I am just simply going to start drifting away from that person.
For my own good. To help myself. It is easier than I thought to undergo depression and I don't ever want to go anywhere near that feeling again. I also don't want people that I love to go there. That's why I put doubt in unconditional love. Because it happens too often that people who claim to love me and my siblings unconditionally hurt us to the extent that we start doubting in ourselves.
And as far as I can admit that I hit some rock bottoms, my brother and sister are wonderful people and if someone tries to stick a knife in their backs, oh so help me God, I won't have it no matter who it is.

You have a child? Go and love that child and teach it how to love back. Show what love is and that it is only true if its nautre is pure. Show that to your family, to your boyfriend, girlfriend, to your dog. Show that pizza some love (well, that's a joke but still, eat it, enjoy it, be thankful you could have it and don't feel guilty for having one since you like it so much and since you allow yourself to have it so rarely).
If the feeling is true, the relationship will last. If it won't you apparently did not need it in your life and you're better off without it.
We all have a brain and a heart, we have senses and intuition. We are educated and have access to more education at any time. Use all of that to make a truthful living for yourself!

Because love is something out of this world, something which fills you with positive energy and makes you smile, sing, dance, write, bake and leaves you speechles when you face it. All you want to do is love and be loved back and when it's all there.. All you can do is close your eyes and say 'thank you' to whichever invisible force there is that provided you with this blessing.


Thanks for reading.