Agape

 I don't know how most of the world works. From the outside, I suppose my life is rather small.

I have a very small family. I teach at a small school. I have a small group of close friends, many of whom don't live close.

But I have always thought that my small life was much bigger on the inside because of love.
I may not know a vast array of people, but those I know, I know to the bone.
 I may be a little quiet and introverted, but when I love you, I promise to love you always.

I have loved so hard and so deep and so through-and-through that once I was convinced  that love could and would save a life.

It did not work. I tried, so hard, to hang on. But when things got truly horrible, there at the end,  love told me it wouldn't work that way. Love is not selfish, and it was selfish to keep trying to hang on.
 So I said, "You can go, it's okay, it's okay. I love you."  They are the hardest words I have ever said.

And even though I know that was the right thing to do, I have had some trouble with love since that day.

I have a lot of thoughts on this (she said after she typed two paragraphs and deleted them). Ultimately, I hope to come back to where Jack (C.S. Lewis) was coming from  when he discussed this topic in The Four Loves.
Funny, I've written more than one paper on The Four Loves. My mind understood it before, but I don't think my heart truly did.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”