Growing up, i think we’re taught to believe that love changes everything, fixes everything.   Love turned the Beast back into a handsome prince and woke up Snow White from her slumber.   Love gives people super human strength and allows people to survive the craziest of situations.   Love is the answer. 

And then you grow up.   And you fall in love.   And after you realize that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises, you’re also faced with another truth.   Love changes nothing.  Fixes, nothing.

To think that love is a magic elixir… to think that loving someone enough will rid them of their demons… to believe all illusions of grandeur is just a set up.  A big. fat. set up.    Because love isn’t magic.   And love doesn’t exercise demons.  Matter fact, in some cases love creates them.  Love changes nothing… changes no one.  

Because the problem with our childhood visions of love is that they involve someone else.   Love is dependant on another person, another mind, another heart.  

There are no childhood stories with the Little Mermaid saying, “Fuck alla this shit” and starting her own underwater kingdom.   Cinderella never kicks her step-sisters asses before moving out.   And how come Snow White gotta be punished for eating an apple!  God forbid a pretty girl eat something she’s not sposed to.  SHIT. 

And I’m not talking shit because I’m bitter, or heartbroken or anything of the sort.  In fact, I’m the complete opposite.   Although my cold black heart is gonna hate me for admitting it,  I’m a big fat hopeless romantic.   I believe in soulmates and happily ever afters.   But I believe in me and my own pursuit of happiness.  I also believe the pre-crackish Whitney when she told me “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”  

It’s taken me 27 years to figure out that love, the way I learned it, isn’t magic.  It changes nothing.  Fixes, nothing.  

It’s taken me 27 years to figure out that love, the way I’m learning it, is magic….When love is about me, its becoming everything I’ve ever thought it was.  It’s magic.  It changes everything.  Fixes, everything… eventually.   I believe that.      

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.   1 Corinthians 13:13