On my drive home from my grandma’s house this weekend, I sat in silence thinking about love. I came to this conclusion: my love language is martyrdom. In every friendship, bond, or romantic partnership, I love with unconditional bounty. I believe that love is a renewable resource that can be replenished over and over and over again.

Love, to me, is an immovable, irrevocable, inequivocabile force of good on this planet and we should be doing everything in our power to reinforce it in our everyday lives.

01. love as renewable resource

If God herself called me to her gates and said, “If you die today, there will be no more war, no more suffering, and nature will heal,” I would go immediately. I don’t care how. That’s how strongly I love the world and the people in it. I believe that we all have the capacity to care for one another in ways that supersede the pain, mistrust, and anger we see in our day-to-day lives. But nature will always find a balance. There is no love without suffering, no death without life. This is a utopian dream that cannot actually occur, but I believe in it.

There is no limit to love. You cannot use it up, lose it, or forget it exists. She is everywhere. I think that’s the foundation of martyrdom. In theory— love begets loss.

02. a pillar of salt

A martyr is a person that dies because of their beliefs. I think of Joan of Arc, MLK Jr., and I guess Jesus? I don’t want to focus on the historical ramifications of a martyr, but rather the belief system around martyrdom and why I think it relates to my interpretation of love— and how we all should love at some point in our lives.

I also think it’s interesting to discuss the anti-martyr— someone that yearns to live but dies based on false belief and mistrust— like Lot’s wife.

Again, I hate to get religious, but this story from the holy book has also fascinated me— the woman that could not simply walk away, even when God said not to. How does one actively defy God?

But I guess we do every single day.

I believe the mistrust or lack of a greater force than ourselves is why we are in such a disastrous place today. Not to say we all need to find religion and convert, but there is something integral to the human spirit in believing in something bigger than ourselves. Surveillance capitalism, a phrase coined by professor emeritus Shoshana Zuboff, and fascism are both repercussions of the 21st century human’s incapacity to view a world that can exist on empathy and belief in something better than what we can create in our own minds.

Even the God created by monotheistic religious groups today is distinctly autonomous, lacking care for all people except the elite and chosen few in the billions of humans on earth. Is that not inherently distrustful? We are all Lot’s wife, who was never named in the Bible, looking back at the destruction and turmoil of our own making. Turning into pillars of salt because we do not trust there is anything better for us ahead.

03. expectations of a lover-martyr

I do not wish to die by the sword. I don’t think that’s justifiable in today’s era of love, because although I do love everybody, I don’t like most of y’all at all. There is a difference.

I don’t want to die by the sword literally, but I would metaphorically. The love language of martyrdom, simply put, is that I trust my love is stronger than any obstacle, trial, issue, or quarrel that can occur in a relationship. Love squanders all. I believe love can destroy, too. Anything that powerful can destroy.

I like to think myself a knight. I pledge fealty with love, my sword the physical manifestation of it.

I place trust in love not to lead me astray. Notice how I say “trust in love” and not “trust in who I fall in love with” because that trust does not belong to anyone but me and my renewable resource, in which I tap into every single day without failure. I do automatically trust those that I love, I do not have to in order to love them. I trust that my love will influence those around me, make them better because it comes from a pure place. I trust in myself and my own intuition to tell me when I can act on love, and when it should simply be.

I think there are certainly negative connotations to this type of perspective on love, but it’s simply a philosophy to live by. The only action tat needs to be taken is to actively care for other people, show and share empathy, ask for help and assist in return to anyone that needs it. You would do this with a lover, do it for a stranger.

If I am a knight, my love my sword, who am I pledging this fealty to?

You, of course! My grandmothers. My sister, my brother. The Walgreens cashier. I place my love in every person I meet, because every single person we’ve ever met has been loved, for some reason or another. That’s enough reason for me.

As for romantic love, I think this idea of martyrdom can become grey. As I said before, this does not mean I place blind trust, faith, and care on everyone I fall in love with simply because they’re there. It does mean, however, that I give them reign to do with my love as they please. Cherish it, protect it, give it back. Neglecting it. None of these responses affects my personhood and how I move in the world, because my renewable resource of love will never lack.

What a lover does with my sword will not harm me, because I am protected by something greater— the love that I have for myself. And without this, there is no martyrdom. There is only self-sacrifice with no purpose.

The purpose is me. The cause is me. I can be both lost and gained. To die for a belief system (in this instance, love) means that I will lose myself, over and over and over again, in love shared with another as a accessory to my own, not as an alternative or replacement.

Love cannot be sacrificed, but I can sacrifice my time, my trust, my faith and hope into another, in the name of love.

That is the lover-martyr’s sacrifice. It is what we should all do, at some point in our lives. Allow yourself to fall in love and do not spare even your most vulnerable self out of fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is one of the few true villains of love. Do not allow fear to halt you from sacrificing yourself in the hopes of becoming better, more empathetic, more reasonable.

04. to love thine enemy

The hardest way to love. Through anger.

I love every person that’s ever wrong me, that’s ever wronged the people I care about, that’ve wronged the whole world. Because if I start making concessions for some and not others, not I’m being inclusive and instead I am choosing where my love should go, now aren’t I? Just like the religious deities we hide behind to spew hate and mistrust.

I love all y’all, for real. I really mean it.

I love my worst enemy the most. And that might be selfish, and maybe evil. But I never said love was good or evil. In fact, I said it has the power to destroy. My love really encompasses all that I do and believe in this world. Which means that I will love you to death, if I must. Hate spreads fast by love spreads easier.

To those I’ve loved before, you will never get away from the words I said to you, the way I said certain things, maybe not even my social media, in the wake of 21st century communication. You may be reading this now.

I am reminded by Stevie Nicks’ lyrics made infamous in Fleetwood Mac’s song Silver Spring:

I'll follow you down

'Til the sound of my voice will haunt you

Give me just a chance

You'll never get away from the sound

Of the woman that loved you

This essay will probably not resonate with many. But to me and my Taurus Sun, Mercury, and Venus placements, this is simple and makes complete sense.

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