2/14

i'm thankful that you exist and i love you. i'm thankful that though it is normal, on a day like today, when the subtext of love is made text, a garish billboard plastered across everything in the world, to not feel loved, to feel as though you will not be loved forever, that maybe you have never been loved, that perhaps you are not deserving of love and will never be loved, i'm thankful to remind you this is a lie that your mind tells you. i'm thankful that it is a lie i have told myself many times on many days like today, so i know that to be true. i'm thankful to understand that sometimes lies we tell ourselves are armor, protection against pain, and sometimes they are self-inflicted wounds (cuts made consciously or unconsciously) and sometimes they are both at the same time, but whatever their use value and effect, they are lies, they are not the truth, which is that love is real and it floats through the ether around us always, accessible like air. i'm thankful to try to tell you that whatever your "relationship status" today, you have been loved many times before, that you are loved now (even if you don't know it, even if the person or people who love you don't know it, or wouldn't use that word for it, whether it's a small love or a big one (can love even be measured in this way, as if it were a substance), it's still love), that you will be loved in the future, on many days and times that your mind can't yet even imagine or comprehend, the future a million forking paths so many of which will lead to new forms of love. i'm thankful that as long as we are alive, we have the capacity to love and be loved, which is not to say that those things are always easy or uncomplicated, or that they can't be entwined with hurt and loss, but that still they are available to us in the same way that breathing is, or our senses, or our ability to dream . i'm thankful, whether you feel love today or don't, to remind you to try if you can to be kind to the people around you, since an act of kindness can be a spark that starts the fire of love in your heart or in the heart of another or, magically (love is both ordinary and magical), both. i'm thankful that you exist and i love you.