Love

Amelie said she loves me. She wasn’t prompted, or under duress. It just came out yesterday while we were watching Come Dine with Me. Sadly, I wasn’t in the best of moods through one thing or another, mainly work, so the gravity of the statement was diluted and its weight added much later when Carla explained the moment again. It was a monumental statement that was lost due to issues that shouldn’t affect me as much as they do. And for that, I’m sorry Amelie.

On the way to work today I thought about this in great detail, and I wondered if Amelie knew what she meant by the word love. We’ve been saying it to her a lot. I generally tell her I love her before she goes to bed and before I leave for work. Carla, if Amelie hasn’t reciprocated, will prompt her to tell me she loves me too. But it’s forced and while nice to hear, I assume to Amelie it is no different than her saying hello, or asking to watch Baby Jake or Gigglebiz.

So when does saying love actually hold within it emotion? I’ll assume for the moment it is still a set response logged in Amelie’s mind that she has memorised and will deliver when it seems right. It’s hard for me to believe that Amelie knows what love is, when in actual fact the term is so wholly at times and infinite in its meaning. One person who declares they love another person might not be measured in the same way I measure my love for Amelie and Carla. Either could be at different strengths, or potency. I base my love on a visceral feeling. It has to stir every part of me and leave the spectrum of emotion in tatters. It can be at times an awful thing and makes me feel I would be better not to have ever loved. The reason being, I have two people in my life that I live for, and should anything happen to either of them every part of me would die, little by little, day by day, until I am wrecked and collapsed in pain. To love someone means to ache, to be bent over in agony, and to live out circumstances and scenarios that damage the heart forever. I do this a lot. If I’m travelling back home in my car and a traffic report details a crash on a road I know Carla might take after she’s picked up Amelie from nursery, the scenario plays out that she was the one involved in the crash, and it is not long before my eyes well and my throat aches. Illness, or the threat of something terminal, is another that bleeds me dry.

But love can also ascend you to the highest plain, mentally and emotionally. It is the best high and the worst downer. Loving someone means your life is never your own. It is someone else’s. If they become depressed, so do you. If they are happy, it lifts your heels. It is the need to exist and the want for an end. Love is a terrible thing, and some days, it best never to have had it. And this is why I am sure Amelie cannot comprehend its meaning.

But that said, recently she’s been running toward me, wrapping her arms around my leg and saying, “My daddy.” Amelie will do this in nursery, as if marking her territory and telling every other child that I am hers. She will also do it while I am talking to the neighbour, or Carla. To me, this is love in its infancy. She realises that I am someone special in her life, someone she can trust and who incites within her emotion that stretch from simple laughter to the comfort of protection. Maybe love does hold a meaning to her. Maybe her perfect little heart contains the vestiges of that which consumes mine. I am under no illusion there will be days she will hate me, but hopefully under all the angst, the bitterness, and apathy, the seed that is growing now will have developed strong roots, and when I’m gone, they will remains forevermore feeding her of my love.