怎么样

This is the most depressing day of my entire summer. Six more interns have left. Most of the rooms are empty now, and my roommate has decided to move out into one of the empty rooms. Her mugs and bowls are still on the shelves and some of her shoes are still in the room. But otherwise, I am alone in my single, a familiar feeling.

I listened to a story on the radio about a woman who adopted a seven-year-old boy from a Romanian orphanage. At one point, the child held a knife to her throat--he had attachment disorder. But she kept loving her son. She took him to therapy and followed the doctor's orders. And he was healed.

Unconditional love does not exist when the lover needs the beloved. Unconditional love is an overflowing from something that is already full. And that is why only God's love is unconditional, and the closest thing after that is the love of mother for child. Romantic love, which pledges to stand firm for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, is the most conditional of all because it is the one fraught with the greatest need.

Between people, 'I love you because I need you' obliterates the other person. It is not an expression of love, but an intrinsically selfish demand, lacking in empathy, lacking in compassion. But between people and God, 'I love You because I need You' is the fullest expression of our frail humanity.

What I've been re-realizing is that I can't love anyone unless I've quenched my own need from the overflowing of a love that's already full. Otherwise, I will only end up needing (or needing to be needed by) the people I profess to 'care' most deeply about.

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In other news, I have turned twenty-one. I can walk into an American bar and order alcohol and then drink it. But drinks are expensive, and getting drunk happened early in life (in a country where twenty-one means nothing anyway). So mostly what this over-hyped number means is that I am another year older, the summer is almost over, and I still live in a world where time, timing, and time-management are relevant. That is somewhat of a bleak thought for me tonight.