✨ MHN’s #MakeThingsApril ✨
By: Holly Mckenna
Tags: Make Things April, Meaning, Love, Personal Essay, Creative Non Fiction

I used to think that a key component of love was consistency; the parts of our life that stayed with us for a long time, that were always there, constituted love. I later learned that time doesn’t factor in at all. I have loved strongly but fleetingly. I have had love arrive on my doorstep at the most inopportune moments and I have had love reside in the most unreachable places. My longest relationship (so far) has been the most love-starved one, wax-sealed with the glaring red stamp of violence and abuse. Love has been planted, nurtured, but died before emerging from the topsoil. Love doesn’t lend its mind to the frivolities of time.

A part of me is still learning what love is, but most of me is now well-acquainted with it. I’m incredibly blessed and am now in a stable, healthy and beautiful relationship with someone who has been a welcome component of that process. But whether I’m with someone or not, I feel much more secure in my knowledge of what love is. That sureness and steadfast belief has taken root deep within me and I know that it isn’t about to budge. I have so much love to give, I love so many things, and I receive so much love in return.

I can’t write about something I love because my love does not exist singularly. It branches outward, in an infinite number of forms and reaches an infinite number of things and people and places, and it is in constant motion. Some days I feel so full to the brim with love that I might burst, that I have to gather up every shard of love from every crevice and hold them all tightly together. Love is my friend, at last, and we do know each other well, but we’re still on that parallel learning experience. We don’t know every crease and contour of each other just yet.

I love my partner; his guitar-string-plucking hands wrapping around me in a way that is all-encompassing but gentle and kind, his gift of always knowing the right combination of words to make me feel comforted, his patience, his grace, his adaptability, his reliability, knowing that his shoulder will always be there to rest my weary head on and that he will always be by my side during this learning process.

I love my best friend; her uniquely creative brain, her unfathomable determination in the face of adversity, her acceptance of limitations, her insistence on still pushing those limitations anyway, our shared adoration of cats and beaches and tea-shops housed in old buses.

I love my family; their unquestioning support and pride toward me in everything I do, the knowledge that an unconditionally loving family is a gift to be treasured, my mum’s unbeatable resilience in whatever hand she is dealt, my dad’s kind heart and fierce defence, watching my younger siblings grow and change and become themselves.

I love nature. I love writing. I love walking. I love photography. I love criminal law. I love reading. I love strong feminist ideals. I love mental health advocacy. I love creating and crafting and sculpting. I love resting at the end of it all. I love organisation. I love my little desk and all its collected treasures. I love my constant cat companions. I love big jumpers and mugs of coffee and plaited hair. I love fresh face cloths and blank notebooks and hot water bottles. I love houseplants. I love outdoor plants. I love scrunchies and earrings and embroidered hoops. I love miniature versions of things that should be much bigger. I love the colour yellow. I love cloth bags and backpacks and my little red satchel. I love bookmarks and birthday cards and old photographs. I love in endless, un-quantifiable amounts.

When love has, for so long, been used in defence of indecency, or stretched taut around a secret agenda, or only comes from an alcohol-sodden brain, it is a beautiful, wondrous blessing to meet it for real. I have an endless amount of love within me to give and I now believe I am intrinsically worthy of reciprocity. I love so many things and I do not plan on stopping.