giving up, is so hard to do...

Sparkle was on last night and Sister sang that song, “Giving up is so hard to do” I feel it every time I hear it, usually it is Donny Hathaway.

I think it is an inherent property of love, giving up. It is always lurking around the corner, but it is a double edge sword. It is hard to maintain love and makes you feel like giving up and yet love is such that to truly have it you can never give up.

I dreamt this morning that I journeyed back to a place that I used to be. Amongst the faces that I used to know there was one that stood out. It was the face of boy that I left behind. We embraced and both cried on the way towards each other. You cannot live with love and then have a dramatic decline of its sources and be the same.

I have been loved so well for so long in my life, that I had been insulated. Never in my life have I been exposed to the pressures that the unloved and being unloved bring upon a life. It is almost unbearable.

I have found it true what Maslow says. Love only can really exist in the presence of certain needs are met. The physiological: air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sleep, sex then safety: security, order, law, limits stability. The unloved live with these absences for so long that they just try to move on towards love, but the needs come back to haunt and eat away at all attempts to love. Not saying love cannot exist without all of these, ok well I did say that. But what I am saying is that it is “…so very hard to do.”

And so now, I look back and I remember when I owned so much more of my future. I realized that I have parceled so much of it away, little by little. I used to be… (Cut to New Jack City, the scene where Pookie and his crack head girlfriend are shooting up…”I was prom queen…”) Well it is like I have heard ever since I was a child, “he has so much potential, he is just not applying himself.” I have watched that potential go right down the drain. Seemingly.

It seems that life is just a bucket full of empty hopes, broken dreams, and disappointments. I major in disappointments. If it is one thing I seem to do well it is disappoint.

Back to that dream, that took place in the place that I used to know. There were so many faces that used to smile at sight of mine that now frowned, if they looked. Some would not even look at me.

A week or so ago, I heard this song that evokes memories of the ending of my childhood marking the commencement of adult life. Not all the words apply but the chorus asks a question of me. A question I am not sure that I can answer in the affirmative…”Do you believe in love, and the promise that it gives?”

I have to believe, or at least try to, for my children’s sake. I want them to be insulated like I was. But different from me, I want them to never feel the pressure of the unloved. Nor become one of their ranks. I wonder if it is at all possible, if I give up and don’t believe.