A time to read

I’ve just finished reading Queen of Babble Gets Hitched. I began it this morning at the Doctor’s office (since I waited for two hours and watched two people wheeled out on stretchers which did not make me opimistic about my prognosis) and finished it at approximately 4:45 this afternoon. But the story was an interesting one, nonetheless. The author, Meg Cabbot, has an uncanny ability to show love in a real way. It’s not the creepy romance novel, swooping-her-hoop-skirt-over-her-head-in-the-barn kind of love. I mean, cause really, who does that?

Anyway, it illustrated a point through this story that has clearly manifested itself to me time and again. Love is not an easy thing. There are those moments that you will never return for anything, but love is never black and white. There are all kinds of shades of grey. Love makes you do stupid things. Love blinds you. Love makes you trust without the slightest hint of a second thought. And ultimately, love confuses us to the point that we don’t know what kind of love we’re in.

There are different kinds of love. The ones I have observed so far are: protective love, friend love, romantic love and parental love. Protective love is a tricky one. I find that it is the one most confused with romantic love and it is also the one closest to friend love. Protective love is where we feel that we must save someone from themselves. I am so guilty of this and I’ve had to learn to discern this love from the others.

The heroine of the book I‘ve read, which I completely feel for because I am totally like her in a lot of ways, is caught between the man she is engaged to, who is perfect in all kinds of ways but totally wrong for her, and his best friend, who genuinely loves her and all of her quirks. Of course, I’ve never been in that particular situation. I simply relate to the way she can’t keep her mouth shut and her love for vintage clothing, not that I have the money to purchase or wear vintage clothing. But anyway, her friends all tell her that it is clear she loves his best friend and that he feels the same way but she doesn’t listen. . .Isn’t that how it is, though? It takes a lot of nerve for friends and family to tell us what they really feel about the people we feel that we have fallen for. It’s not an easy subject to tackle. “Oh, by the way, you’re making a huge mistake. . .” Who wants to say that?

At any rate, all’s well that ends well. But to quote from the book, “Because as I know from my study of the philosophy of time, whatever is going to happen in the future is already unavoidable.” Try wrapping your head around that one on cold medicine!