Day 3: My First Love

I'm back for Day 3. It's 7:30 in the morning and I've been awake for somewhere around an hour. My little cuddle bug is sitting in her swing watching Pinky Dinky Doo and talking to Pinky. Today's word of the day on Pinky Dinky Doo, if you're interested, is "random". By the time Lily can really talk, she's going to have a wonderful vocabulary, because "random" is the smallest, shortest word I've heard them highlight on this show.

But, I digress. This blog is not titled "Day 3: What Lily watches on TV at 7:30 am".

This blog, much to my chagrin, is entitled "Day 3: First love..." This should be full of a lot of introspection.

I think everyone's first love is their mom and dad, and family. It has to be, because they're who the hospital entrusts with your well being. They cuddle you, feed you, change you, bathe you, let you spit up on them...that's love, right? I have a great family and I've NEVER felt un-loved. We may not have had tons of money, and I may not have been spoiled, but I was for sure loved. And still am. I'd show you a lovely picture of a four year old me, with my mom and dad, but it's too early for me to go digging for it. Maybe in another blog.

I know, you're all reading this thinking to yourself "Of course we know her parents love her and she loves them. But that's not what I want to read! I want to know about her first loooooove!"

I thought about what I would write here for a few days, even before I officially started the challenge, after reading a few others. Honestly and truly, at the end of the day, my first TRUE love...the kind that knocks your socks off, the kind that makes everything you ever thought might have possibly been love before fade into the darkness in comparison...the kind that makes you want to go to the end of the earth or even to the moon and back...was JP.

See, I've always labored under the idea that if I have to think about whether or not I'm in love with someone, then I'm not. I dated...and dated and dated...some I just went out with once or twice. Some were a few weeks, some were a few months, and some were even off and on for a few years. But I wasn't ever in LOVE with any of them, and I knew that. Pretty sure they did, too, which explains a lot of problems we had. Did some of those guys hurt me? Absolutely. Did it feel like my heart was broken? At the time, yes. But, recovery happens fast when your heart really isn't cracked into a million pieces and you suck it up and get over it. When I look back on certain situations, I realize 100% that it wasn't anything REAL.

But one thing I do have to say for all of those experiences...they all made me realize what I wanted in a spouse. I was able to figure out yes, I like this characteristic. No, I don't like this one. All of the tumultuous experiences I had were all for a reason..so I would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, when God put the right person in my life.

I mentioned in one of the blogs yesterday...from the first time I saw JP, I knew I was going to marry him. I don't know how. I just did. (Kind of like how I knew Lily was a girl from the second the shock of a "PREGNANT" popped up on the test strip. I don't know how I knew that. I just did.) Of course, it was a few years before we even met, but the rest is history.

If you asked me to explain what love is, and how I know that is what I feel for him...I probably couldn't. I joke around and say things to him like "You just farted in bed and tried to pull the covers over my head, and all I did was laugh. That's love." or "I let you have an entire room of the house for your guns, Star Wars stuff, and cop stuff. That's GOT to be love, right?" He really is my perfect match, because even though he can annoy the crap out of me, at the end of the day, I can't imagine myself with anyone else. I can lay my head on his shoulder and all is right with
the world. Love isn't always sunshine, roses, and candle lit dinners. Love is 2:58 in the afternoon, hanging out on the couch finishing up Season 3 of your favorite TV show in your pajamas. Love is everything that makes the daily grind worth it.

Another, different type of "first" love happened at the hospital, April 9, 2010, at 3:30 in the afternoon. That was when Dr. Deppen handed me my few seconds old, blood and goo covered newborn daughter. I honestly thought my heart was going to explode in my chest at the amount of love I felt for her, and for JP, in that minute. She was (and still is) the most perfect thing I've ever seen in my life. The love that I felt then (and still feel, now) is so overpowering and overwhelming sometimes that it's hard to imagine that I even deserve it. When Lily came, the love that I had for JP expanded and changed ten fold. Looking down at Lily, knowing that we created her with love (whether we realized we were creating her or not!), and knowing that there is a little person that is a perfect mix of the two of us running around the world now, just deepened and intensified everything. Grown-up love became GROWN UP love.

And yet another, totally different kind of true love is the love between best friends. I have one best friend that has been in my life since I was 12. She knows who she is (and most of you do, too). A best friend that you can talk for hours to about nothing...someone who will listen to you complain and cry and whine about things that were, for all intents and purposes, your own fault and never once judge you for them...someone who is there for you unconditionally because they WANT to be...and you are all those things for them. That is love. When my best friend and I went our separate ways for a few years, largely due to my own selfish, stupid choices, I was literally heartbroken. I cried harder, and mourned the loss of that friendship more than I'd ever mourned the loss of any one other than my grandfather (Poppy). Once I grew up, thankfully, we were able to repair the pieces...that's also love.

So, I had to stop writing this blog in order to get us to Me-Maw's on time, and, after probably one of the worst days I've had in a LONG time, I'm back to writing about love. It's now 8:54 pm. More than 12 hours have passed and I'm still trying to figure out what to write about my first love.

What, or who could I say was my first love? The thing about love (and hate) is that we use it so...freely. "I LOVE this song" or "I love breakfast in bed" or "I love Gwen Stefani's new outfit". But that's far from actual love. It's more like, well, like...a whole, whole lot. That brings me back to the beginning, where I talked about the people I dated before JP. All of them...every single one...fell into the "like" category. Some of them I liked a whole, whole lot. But I never truly LOVED until him.