"I Love You", the words

There are those who toss out I love you's like candy at a parade: carelessly grabbed handfuls scattered out to random strangers. Rainbow bits of empty-caloried joy. There are no expectations, no care how many are grabbed up in happy, greedy little fists nor how many are crushed forgotten in the streets. There are other sorts of "love yous", too: I love your hair, your clothes, your car. I love your art. I love your work. I love how you did the thing. Those are all really more about the thing than you - the loving just kind of backsplashes onto you by proximity, and that's ok with that kind of loving. Then there is the "I love "you guys"" - a carefully light splash of adoration in a general direction, sending a bit more to the persons perhaps, but with enough generality that one can brush past any bits of it they don't want. Just reallocate the bits of love elsewhere to someone else in the group or to the thing if you don't want to keep them for yourself. No danger, no cost, no reciprocation required. There are chirrupy "Love you!"s - a thank you and a friendliness tossed amongst friends to bounce around happily like a beach ball in a concert crowd. But "I love you"? That's a wholly different creature. It's a living thing, not a throw-away, best gifted between humans with mere breath between them. I threw two of them to the winds this week. At 4am am already weeping over them, alone in the silence of pre-dawn like a mother whose child has just left home for the first time, fruitlessly aching for their future welfare and happiness. Wishing those little words to fly back to me so I could nurture them into maturity a bit longer before risking them to the world. Those words came at me unexpected, and our human gut reaction is to bounce them back, but I have always disliked speaking untruths, particularly that one. So for a moment I choke the casual recipricatory response, flash query my soul and discover it's true. I do love you. Somehow. It may be a tiny tender thing barely beginning to uncurl fronds to the light, but there it is. Fledgling, with only possibility before it, but with all the world's whispered promises burgeoning within. So it's true. But - perhaps especially because true - it felt like dragging a raw abraded soul over gravel to throw those words back flippantly into the sunlight, unprotected. Do people ever feel that hesitation? That breath of eternity where you pause, question all you know about yourself before you respond? Check a thousand internal reference points for truth and accuracy? I say most of my "I Love Yous" in this world with actions, not voice. Or I can write them in infinite variation. I can change the written word. I can craft and mold and tweak it to present subtle variation in hue. But words once spoken fly out and cannot be taken back. They can only die or flourish. The life they live is set the moment they fly from your lips, their course immutable. It can be a harsh cruel world out there for I love you's. I am... careful... with them. I rarely let them go until I know they are strong enough to survive on their own. I keep them close...safe...sweetly nurtured until I believe beyond question that the soil they land in is rich and fertile and well-tended, the parameters of their hue clear between us. It is - it was - a thing of bravery to throw them boldly into the winds, so young, so tender and fragile. It took a leap of faith to see them tucked cavalierly into the pockets of whistling sailors who sauntered away content with their days' catch, a deep, deep breath for me not to send my heart leaping after them to reel those tiny words back in to safety. I don't think you understood the value of what was snatched from the air so casually. But there they went. Fly free little ones! Grow and flourish.