You know the click-bait quizzes on Facebook that “Help you discover your spirit animal now!” or say, “What kind of man will you marry based on your dessert preference?” like your eating habits could actually determine your future husband?
…yeah, I always fall for these.
I can remember nights spent with a group of friends (Hello Hazantourage!) where we would spend hours doing buzzfeed quizzes to find out Which Harry Potter Character You’re Most Like or What Your Superhero Name Is.
So when a friend told me about a quiz online to find out what my love language was, I had to investigate. For science, of course.
There is a widely known study that breaks down love into 5 “love languages.” These five ways show how you best communicate your love for someone else and how you desire to be loved. They include words of affirmation, receiving gifts, physical touch, quality time, and acts of service.
As a teenager, I have heard a lot of different things about these love languages, but I never decided to look into them until recently. After taking the quiz (you can take it here!), I wasn’t at all surprised by my top two results: words of affirmation and receiving gifts. I didn’t need a quiz to tell me that I feel the most loved when people say, “Hey, I appreciate you and value you,” or by showing me that through their actions. But this quiz did get me thinking about gift giving, and why it has become such an important and powerful part of my life.
For me, the thrill of the gift giving process isn’t receiving, but actually doing the giving that is my favorite part. I pride myself in being an excellent gift giver. Most of my gifts are pieces of artwork. They take thought, planning, and often leave me with a very sore back, but there is nothing more special to me than seeing my friend’s face light up when they open a gift specifically designed for them. You know the feeling, when they look at you, and you just know you knocked it out of the park? And your heart just kinda beats a bit harder because you are so overwhelmed with joy and compassion for that person? Yeah. I love that. So whether it’s Christmas, birthdays, or graduation, I always feel compelled to give or make the best gift possible. And although part of that might be due to my extremely competitive nature, I think a big part of that desire is because of the way I feel when I know someone took the time to pick something out that was special for me. Like when for graduation, my best friend hand painted a picture frame with the F.r.i.e.n.d.s. Logo (aka the best tv show of all time) on it with a picture of us, or when my dad found the perfect necklace for Christmas to represent the struggles and triumphs I have been through in the past two years. Yes, the gifts are nice, but it is the care and love behind them, the planning and the thought that goes into them, that make it so special and important.
During my freshman year at Clemson, I have learned a ton. I’ve learned that you have to actually study to do well on your exams, not just study for 30 minutes and spend 3 hours scrolling Facebook and Twitter. I’ve learned that relationships can be really hard, and that communication is the foundation for any successful friendship. I’ve learned that even if you don’t like coffee going into college, you will learn to like it eventually. I’ve learned that rice has 42,000 genes, that most horses really do not like to be girthed, and that there is never a wrong time for ice cream. But one of the most important lessons I have learned is the gift of giving. And not just the giving of materials, but the giving of time. The giving of yourself.
Maybe it is the poet in me, or the hopeless romantic, but I have fallen for the concept of giving. To me, when I intentionally give my time for phone calls at 1 am to my best friend in New York, that is me saying, “I love you, and you’re important to me (and more important than the sleep I am forsaking.)” When I crawl out of bed at midnight to pick someone up from a party, it’s my way of telling that person, “Your life and safety are my priority, and I will always be here for you.” You see, giving is just another way of loving. It is you handing a person a fraction of your heart and trusting them with a piece of yourself.
I always had this picture in my mind of my own self. I looked inside and a saw a mess; my soul felt like a cracked mirror; the one you look in, and you can see pieces of you, but you don’t look like yourself at all. Everything is sharpened edges and bloodied fingertips, and I could never figure out how to put the shards back together. This made loving others really, really hard for me. It is hard to love someone when you are afraid they will cut themselves on the pieces of you that aren’t quite so perfect. It is hard to love when you feel broken.
But the thing is, when you start to give- truly give, when you not only give gifts or time but when you start to share pieces of yourself- people give back. They take a piece of my cracked-mirror heart, and give me a sliver of stained glass in return.
That’s the greatest part of giving to me. It feels like collecting pieces of the people you love most. Of holding them so closely to yourself, of swearing to keep them safe, because they trusted you enough to open their fist and let you see who they really are.
I used to believe I could do everything on my own. That I didn’t need help from anyone else. I’ve come to realize that is simply not true. I was scared; scared to open up, scared to not be alone. Scared to get hurt. Still am scared, to be honest. But I’ve learned that people will support you more often than not. I’ve learned that no matter how broken you feel, there are people who want to help you pick up the pieces. There are people who want to add to the artwork, too.
I am not whole. I have given away pieces of me to those I love most; a girl in New York, a boy across the dorm, a grandmother I miss every day, a friend fighting to find herself by the sea, a brother across town, parents 2.5 hours away. But I am not unwhole, either. My mirror pieces are intertwined with nights spent up talking, purple flowers, belly laughter in between homework, ocean salt, car rides singing Adele at the top of our lungs, and embraces that I remind me who I am. I am a mosaic of every person I have loved. And no, I am not whole in the way some are, but I am art, a little messy, but created by love, and that is more than whole could ever be.