I’ve Stopped Keeping Score, Love Me if You Want

Love as a courageous act

Em Hollenberger

In middle-of-nowhere-small-town-Wisconsin, a young girl is in catechism lessons. She loves God and loves her family. The lesson she is being taught is of love and she loves love. A great, world-changing love; the kind of love you would die for, the kind of love that saves you from death. 

There are a few footnotes to this love, Moses must have forgotten to read the fine print carved by lightning into the tablets before signing on the dotted line. These footnotes ( she won’t learn of quite yet) describe conditional love: no involvement in the LBGTQ+ community, no premarital sex, no abortions, no divorces, no believing in the “wrong” God, no skipping Sunday mass. Oh, and don’t eat too much, don’t be needy (or useless), and no flip flops (she is warned about flip flops multiple times for reasons she still does not understand). The fine print also includes a few tests one may be subjected to for proof they are worthy of this love. You must be willing to sacrifice your son on a mountain top, slaughter the people who inhabit the “promised land” (see the book of Joshua or perhaps modern day Palestine), and, of course, perform ritual murder of your daughter because you made a silly deal to win a 

war.

A little girl grows up knowing original sin made her inherently sinful and dirty. She must deny her nature to be worthy of the kind of love that can save her from mortal sin. Her own flesh and bones are her enemies, so she breaks her ribs and folds one half into the other trying to make something strong enough to hold all the guilt. Plucked her vocal chords to say the right things (and keep her mouth shut otherwise), wear the right clothes, and be just enough—but never—never—too much. She is told not to call herself a believer unless she is willing to kill for her beliefs. She asks to be killed instead so she can still be considered something holy—a daughter sacrificed while still innocent so her blood might mark others as saved. But she was spared, and her soul damned; she became a killer but not for Him. 

She grows into a woman who loves with a knife in one hand. She confuses pain and devotion for so long that she cannot distinguish between tears and laughter. She builds homes in the arms of men who harm her, views the bruises as proof of their love (the necessary price to be worthy). 

She was already numb when he believed “No” was a suggestion (the weight of him pinning her wrists proof of her faithfulness). Raised to be a handmaiden, a command to fall to her knees felt like holy work. 

Today, a man who cries and seeps wildflower honey from his pores has her wrapping handwritten letters in flower petals. Her friends joke that she’ll lose her reputation as a bitter cynic. But the first slip of her fingers on the hilt didn’t happen on a dinner date or during a first kiss. Be it the will of God, the design of the Fates, or—just as likely—sheer wild luck, she landed in the lives of three wondrous women who showed her what true unconditional love feels like. There was nothing that should have made them click instantly. They shared neither interests nor experiences, core values or even ideas of what friendship should be. Solely a fierce sense of loyalty (and the trauma of sharing a communal bathroom) fused their bond. 

It wasn’t a magical fairytale where they all rode off into the sunset. In reality, the story is extremely underwhelming. They simply knew how to be. That’s the hardest part of life, when you can’t fix it—or nobody wants you to—all you can do is sit with them through the storm. They were with her when she drank too much, when she couldn’t get out of bed, and when she cried for no reason. When she messed up, as we all do, they let her apologize and try to do better.  Every night she didn’t think she would survive until dawn when they stayed with her in the moonlight. They are there through it all and, for the first time she begins to understand what they mean by unconditional love. And she begins to believe that she is worthy of it. Some days she stares at the knives in the kitchen for a moment too long but she still accepts the warm embrace of a meal made to share and a home filled with laughter.