Day 213 Absolution

At one point in the recent culture sensation, Glee, the neurotic Rachel Berry asks the ever-beffuddled Finn Hudson why on earth he'd take back his lying, cheating ex-girlfriend, Quinn Fabray even after she gave birth to his best friend's daughter. (I know: you'd think this crap would be on a daytime opera and not on Fox.)

His answer?

"I don't know."

The socially awkward Rachel however, does, answering herself,

"You always forgive your first love."

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about what it would take to make me leave my life behind to go away with someone else; someone I truly, without a bitter or selfish bone in my body love. It's that (almost-)all-consuming emotion where I know that if this man were to ask me to jump off a cliff with him, I'd spend the entire fall laughing with him.

See, I know what I'm capable of when I love someone. I know what I'm willing to do, the distance I'm willing to travel, the money I'm willing to throw away, and the sacrifices I'm willing to make for the sake of making that person happy. I don't mean this in just a romantic fashion: I mean it in every aspect of my life, in every relationship I have with the people around me, I know exactly where they fall in my social spectrum and I understand what it takes to build those relationships and what it takes to break off each and every one of them beyond the possibility of repair.

Some relationships, like the ones I have with friends I made even before I got my period and my family, will always be there. Included in this section is the one man in this world that I know right here and now I will always, always forgive and always, always reach out for. You forgive your first loves for any and all transgressions if not but for the simple reason that they were the first.

Yes, I know I'd follow this man to the ends of the world if he asked me. That is how much I love him. But the thing is, I won't. Because as much as I love him, I know he doesn't love me in return, let alone enough to ask me to come with him, much less to follow me if I were to ask the same of him.

See, I know what I'm capable of when I love someone; even moreso, I know what I'm capable of when they don't love me. I've been on both ends of a one-sided relationship so I know at what point I lose my patience, resolve, and dignity and turn into an incoherently babbling pile of goo on the floor. So while I can love and forgive and love and forgive a hundred times over in one day, I know I can't expect to be loved back. And today it struck me to wonder: is not loving you something you're supposed to forgive them for, when it's not something they're supposed to do in the first place?