New Love

New love is precious and must be protected. It is fragile like a flower that has just begun to barely open. It has not yet fully formed into its glory and is still developing. Other people can become jealous seeing new love. When that jealousy is unconscious, it is especially dangerous to the new lovers. Attempts to sabotage the blooming love by fairweather friends can be mistaken for good will by the starry-eyed. Be careful when you fall in love — some other people really dislike seeing two people happy and will do what they can to quash it, in frighteningly subtle and manipulative ways. It is difficult to believe that people could be so cruel, however, I regrettably have directly learned this lesson, albeit at a very delayed pace. What becomes of this love? What becomes of love that did not get a chance to fully form? Perhaps the flower bud fell to the ground but scattered its seed nearby and that lucky seed became a completely new plant. Or do the petals become dirt once more and bloom forward into other grasses and flowers? Maybe the new love we need most of all is new love for our authenticity. Layers off. Perhaps the lesson we needed to learn was there all along underneath the layers, and we just did not see it right away.