Unconditional

"Don't forget that what kept them above is unconditional love."

Unsure of where to go from here, I drive home from work. I'm probably a little bit delirious from lack of sleep, listening to my Christmas CDs. Singing almost without meaning.
That's when Rufus Wainwright rolls his tongue over the word unconditional. His emphasis on syllables is different, but my mouth likes the way the word tastes, tumbling over my lips. To fall on the low rumbling word, love.
I began to think about that. So often we have conditions for our love. If only you lost some weight. If only you didn't get mad at me so often. If only you called me more. If only you loved me more. Then I could love you. Or perhaps, we tell ourselves, then only I could love you more.
So often we ask for acceptance when we don't accept others. We beg for acceptance while outlining conditions. And then I thought, how do you love someone unconditionally when they don't reciprocate?
It was this small question and other conversations that led to realization. Not only is loving unconditionally a choice, but at the same time, you don't have to use that as an excuse to be a doormat. You can choose to give into other's expectations of you, even if it's not what you want, or you can just continue to live your life seeking out what makes you happy. Having been faced with so many different people with so many expectations, I realized that I owed no one anything. I didn't have to cater to what people wanted from me in the hopes that they would accept me. Because that in and of itself was a set of conditions. I'll like you better if you were like this, I heard in my head. Ok, I can be like that, I said. Only really, I just couldn't. I realized I needed to become aware of my needs and boundaries. And collapsing on those to feed someone's expectations would only make me unhappy. Better to live and let live I say.
For some reason this also reminds me of a Jason Mraz song I'd listened to recently. "If all along the fault is up for grabs, why can't you have it? If it's for sale what is your offer then, I'll sell it for no less than what I bought it for. Absolutely zero."
And more than anything, in this moment, I realized. I needed to unconditionally love myself.

"You can measure it in blood, you can measure it in love."