I've got a vision of love.

I see how it is. RD disappears for a while and Playing With Matches goes to crap. Girls, come on. Where are you? Where have you gone? Where is your commitment?

Seriously, though, I shouldn’t complain. You all are committed. You all are wonderful, caring individuals. And you all (and others like you) showed me, during my hiatus, just what love and friendship really are and mean.

This is not an open letter of friendship to my fellow bloggers but, rather, an exposition on a realization that I came to this week. My so called hiatus was not one that was anticipated or even planned. I found myself celebrating New Year’s Eve not with a beau or even with friends. No, friends, I spent my time welcoming in the new year in the operating room having emergency surgery. All is well, do not fret. Things were rough going for a while. But it was during that time, no matter how cheesy it sounds, that I realized what love and what commitment really are.

Love is a call to check in, to see how you are feeling. Love is a frantic phone call, worrying about your well-being. Love is dropping all plans and sitting in the waiting room, hoping and praying that you will get through this. Love is telling someone how much you scared them and asking them to never do that again. Love is text messages sent at all hours of the day, whether the last one went answered or not, just to tell you someone is thinking about you and sending good wishes your way. Love is bouquets of flowers and bouquets of cookies and bouquets of balloons. Love is sitting with you while you recover, even though you’re not saying anything and hospitals are gross places. Love is asking, over and over, what you can do for someone, even though you know the answer will be “nothing.” Love is DVDs and Sudoku books and stuffed animals (even though you are—ahem—almost 30). Love is taking care of business for you when such business is in need of being taken care of. Love is the sound of your voice on the phone when you find out bad news, and the subsequent relief that is audible when you realize everything is going to be okay. Love is giving up your own comforts so that those of others can be met. Love is undying commitment to the happiness and well being of someone other than yourself.

For a blog whose focus is, essentially, a chronicle of love and the search for it, I know this is not really a post you’d expect to see. This is not about romantic love. This is not about lust and infatuation. This is about the love that we should realize we already have in our lives, the love we don’t always appreciate and recognize even less. Perhaps it will make the search for “true love” less daunting and dubious. But maybe it will also help us all figure out that it is something that often evolves without us even realizing it, without being forced or prodded, without being overanalyzed.