wanna know love? look to community

When I was young I remember thinking that Disney Channel could teach me about love. I remember wondering when I’d feel the butterflies in my belly. Would they tickle or would my entire body succumb to gravity? I wondered when I’d steal glances with a cute boy in the hallway or when I’d start planning for an imaginary wedding. I wondered often and too much. So much that I didn’t realize what I was neglecting — the creation and maintenance of Love right before me.

When my auntie was in between cities, searching for a place to call home and keep her family safe, she looked to my mom for a peaceful transition. In this small townhouse, in the depths of Southeast Philly, the 7 of us all shared a space. Soon, the creaks of the house became the signal of someone finally reaching home after surviving the challenges of the day. The smell of dinner at night was our signal to pause our efforts of existing and just enjoy a moment of togetherness. And even when we fought with our fists clenched and a build up ready to unleash, we knew that at the end of each day, we are still family. Which, at the time, meant protecting each other from a common enemy — the side effects of systemic oppression. We were our own community because there was no room for us anywhere else. Of course, in my East African household, we weren’t hip to what was actually happening to us, but internally, we knew. And I’ve now come to believe that this knowing is instilled in many of us. It’s why our communities feel the way they do.

When I moved away later in my life, I was still ignorant to the ways that Love was more than shared kisses in the morning. This ignorance led me to lean on a version of Love that wasn’t and isn’t stable. I wanted to take my entire existence, with all of my dreams, worries, and childhood memories and hand them off to someone that is still learning themselves in this way. All of my life, I’d been taught that to know Love, I must hand myself off to someone willing to hold me up. But what happens when their strength falters? Or what happens when they decide they don’t want to use their strength in this way anymore? Am I then to believe that this is all there is to Love? Am I truly to think that I can only know love through a method that has a 50% survival rate?

My earlier ignorance proved to be detrimental for me. Since I decided to name and know Love as one thing, I forgot to nurture the other ways in which Love can exist, and when I needed it most, I wasn’t able to access it. There is danger in not knowing Love as whole.

It wasn’t until I had to rethink the ways I gave Love that I came to know it. It wasn’t until I started to know Love as an investment in someone’s survival and ultimate success, that I began to truly understand it. It wasn’t until my community held me without ever needing to be near me that I looked Love in the face and remembered when I first saw it, between my mom and her sister, from my mother to myself, from self to others. Unknowingly, I was receiving and giving Love in ways that were just as fulfilling, if not more fulfilling than the Love I had been sold in my life.

If you want to know Love, look to your community. When the Black grandma from down the street becomes a temporary nanny, that’s Love in full form. When your mother cooks dinner for you and your 5 friends from around the block, that’s Love in full form. When the parent of another student in class asks “How’s your little one doing? We haven’t seen him in a while..,” that’s Love. And yes, intention matters, and at times, they are not always well meaning but the action. The action is what indicates that Love exists within us, not outside. It’s the way that Black people, at least for me, have always built foundations for communities to exist. That’s Love. When you are invested in the survival and the success of your community, beyond self, that’s Love.

But even with the comfort of knowing this, I can’t help but now wonder, if you’ve never had to survive anything — if you’ve never had to wonder if your last day is lingering nearby, could you say that you know Love?

Is Love only for those that must survive to exist?

Love,

Simi