love is not a candle

We were all handed the same idea about love. That it is a candle. A small precious flame you keep safe inside you, hidden from the wrong people, saved for the one who finally earns it. Guard it. Don’t let anyone blow it out.

We believed it. Most of us are still half living by it.

Lyon says the candle is real. The heart does keep something tender. And then he says the part that wrecks the whole picture. Love is also a fire. Not a candle. A fire. And a fire does not get blown out by the wrong breath. A fire is the strongest thing there is, and you do not protect it.

You walk into it.

Here is what that means in a real relationship. The honeymoon ends and the heat changes. It stops feeling like butterflies and starts feeling like friction, like pressure, like everything tender is gone. We read that as the love leaving. It is not leaving. It is finally turning on. It is starting to burn off everything in us that was never love. The scorekeeping. The need to be right. The armor.

That does not feel gentle. It feels like getting taken apart. It is.

One thing, because people fake this constantly. Intensity is not depth. Drama is not fire. If the burning is aimed at the person in front of you, that is not love, that is just you being cruel and calling it deep. The real fire only burns what is false in you.

We kept the flame small so it would be safe. That is why it never freed anybody.

Walk into the fire. What is left when everything burns is the only part of you that was never going to.