Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

Positive and negative emotions are wildly different. Recognizing some of them can be difficult sometimes, and that includes love.

So, trying to pick out an example, a specific memory, when I can tell without a doubt that I felt loved by someone else, was a challenge. For the most part, its a semi-constant state of how people relate to each other, and not a strong burst of an emotion. It’s subtle. Subtle actions, kind words, can often be taken for granted and the recognition is missed.

Thinking about this prompt was difficult, if only because within my family we take care of each other and never really think anything of it. It’s all a matter of course. I did eventually pick one moment out.

Right about my 26th birthday was when I received the news that I was being layed off. Two weeks later I had appendicitis. Having just turned 26 meant I no longer qualified to stay on my parents insurance, and I was a contractor through a third party organization that didn’t offer health insurance. So, ER visit into an appendectomy without health insurance!

The pain was almost tolerable and I had debated on just trying to sleep through the night, but eventually I just couldn’t take it. I lived alone at the time, and I was kind of a recluse with almost no friends in town at that point, so I drove myself to the hospital.

I got admitted sometime around 10pm and placed in a room. They did some scans of my abdomen, and they found that my appendix was in an odd position so they almost missed it. It hadn’t burst yet (they used the term “perforated”) but it was definitely getting closer to that. They promptly scheduled my surgery for the morning and wheeled me back to my room.

At this point, knowing what my situation was, I had texted my (local) siblings and my parents to give them the emergency update. After that, I posted about it on Facebook and got an exasperated text message from my sister (who lived six hours away) about how she was finding out about it this way. Oops. I had initially planned on telling her in the morning afterwards because I didn’t want to worry her when she couldn’t really do anything in her situation, but the jig was up.

Lots of text messages back and forth between me and my family, and then I finally got some sleep before surgery. I get through surgery just fine and I’m taken to recovery. I eventually get back to my phone and text everyone the update. Later that day, my parents drove up from the farm (they were only 30 minutes away) and they picked me up. We run by the Walgreens where I get my prescriptions, me riding with my Dad and my stepmom driving my car, and we get everything the doctor’s said I needed. Eventually we make it back to my apartment, my parents drop me off and make sure I’m okay, checking again if there was anything else I needed before they left.

I was on my own again, recovering from my surgery, but I was home with no fussing or frustration. Except, obviously, from my sister.

I look back on this moment (and one other involving my Dad and stepmom) and think about how much it meant that they came to help me out like that. The whole drawn out situation, all the time spent with them making sure I had what I needed was a large but subtle showing of how much they loved and cared.