To Be Loved.

We all want to be loved.

To feel that infatuation and that pure desire that skips the beat in your heart. To feel that undying connected and soul bare experience that allows you to gravitate yourself. To build a better you. Someone to share that experience with. Someone to capture that moment in your life where time builds and the clock just stands still. This is a time that when life ends, ashes turn to dust and bodies pass away-that time seemed too short with that person you have loved. Everybody wants that human element to reconnect and be within a stillness that only another person truly understands. I have loved. I have had a love in my life that was my muse, my inspiration, my smile. He was my everything, and I lost him. I have loved.

We all want to be loved.

It is of human life dependency that we rely on it. That four letter often forgotten and left astray word has built empires and crushed dreams within an instant. Newborn infants cry out for a human touch to be connected to a breathing life like their own to not be left alone, to not be forgotten. But love is often forgotten. It is forgotten in everyday salutations and goodbyes. It is forgotten in the monotony of prepared meals and the smell of a fresh baby after a bath. Through the rushed hours within the day to get tasks completed we forget the task at hand-to be loved. To love. To share it. To breathe it. To be immersed in it. Because if we remember, we will have to address it. We will have to address issues swept by a broom under the oriental rug. It is that elephant in the room sad and lonely, crying out for attention. And we walk by it. Around it. Under it. Over it. But we never conquer it. It is a mountain with jagged edges, hills and valleys, peaks and declines. With all these things which I can liken love to, I will liken it to this: joy. Even after the hurt, the pain, the tears and wasted years-I am not bitter and I still hold on to that joy and beautiful wonder of love.

We all want to be loved. And I have loved. I dare to love. I dare to be loved. I dare to allow someone to love me again.

-b.r.rivera