It is my life’s work, yet I am embarrassed to speak of my love for other people. It is so difficult to include that word “love” in a conversation with individual friends. My heart knows it is a common theme running through the assortment of people I am close to. Still it feels embarrassing to tell my companions that I love them.
With them, it remains unspoken. But to me it has been no secret that I have been so unconstrained in opening my heart to many of my companions. Still, I am embarrassed to tell them so. They might be embarrassed to hear it.
Once again, I feel like I am pushing against the stifling constraints of my culture. To say “I love you” can be as embarrassing, so I am taught, as stepping naked onto the dock at my lake cabin. Too revealing, too uncomfortable, too challenging for others to experience. And so I typically remain mum. Silent.
But not always. There are a few of my friends with whom the word “love” has furtively slipped into conversation. But only a couple. Yet I am aware that among a whole assortment of companions it is no secret to my heart that I am “in love” with each of them.
I once broadcast to everyone I knew that we are “all called to be lovers, to bear one another’s burdens and share each other’s joys.” That was many years ago. Perhaps it was risky to make such a public statement, to broadcast my birthright and aspiration. It would be another challenge to say that directly and personally to everyone I knew, even though it might be ardently true.
It is sometimes a burden to despise the constraints of a culture that places such limits on us, the says we must be embarrassed to say I love you. I meant it to be my life’s work to be a lover. I might as well get on with it today while I still seem to have time. It is time to push aside my fear and caution of embarrassment, my own and my beloveds. I have no good reason to keep my heart from speaking out.