Love is a ghost train, rumbling through the darkness.

I’m reading a book called “Love” by Toni Morrison. I love Toni Morrison – which is weird, I think, because I’m not at all a feminist, not a leader of the Women’s Movement, which Morrison so clearly is.

I do love her books, though. Every line is like poetry. She makes me appreciate and even love something that I don’t fully believe in.

With this one, though, I wasn’t sure what to think – I’m still not, actually. I expected a great love story… I’m not really sure why; that’s not Morrison’s style. She’s all about the undertones and hinting at the beauty of love in an otherwise ugly world… finding love in people and things that no one has ever found love in before.

Reading the pages of this book, I’ve been a little frustrated. “Where’s the love?” I was wondering. I found myself considering myself lucky: “I have many kinds of love, love that can be seen clear as day by anyone who cares to look.”

I’ve always believed that. I am loved – no matter how much I tend to overlook the fact or desperately will myself to believe that it’s not true. I am loved by many people, and in many different ways.

Tonight, driving home through the deserted streets of Rensselaer, I thought otherwise. Tonight I’m having a really hard time recalling all the ways that I am loved. A best friend whose love was presumed to be unconditional has failed. Roommates proved to be friends only when it was necessary. High school friends have forgotten my name and my face. People who were just becoming friends have left for one reason or another. A very close friend has seen it as a burden to be seen with me.

At a time when I should be reveling in the array of love I feel for people and they feel for me, I am instead left wondering if any of it was ever there to begin with.