the greatest love

The saints I call friends.

Love.

We all need it. We all want it. Most of us spend over a decade searching for the "perfect" it. And recent happenings in my life have had me pondering this crazy thing called love -- a lot. 

Whenever I have lost a big love in my life, I wind up feeling like it has sucked every last drop of love out of me.

I am loveless.

Wah. Wah.

This time around -- the wiser (not really) and older (this part's true) Jena is taking on a new (much less whiney) sentiment. The love of my life may be MIA -- but the love in my life is not. 

Through every relationship struggle I've ever had since I fell in love the first time at 15 -- I've had my friends lending their shoulders to cry on -- and remarkably, for some, after 10 FREAKING years -- their ears to listen.

So, this one is for you. My unbelievably patient friends who never seem to care that my love life resembles a song that skips…on a scratched up CD…in a broken CD player that won't let you go on to the next freaking song…

I can't forget to mention -- though I'd like to -- that every time I am in relationship bliss…my CD doesn't skip… I doesn't even play. I don't call home, I don't make plans with friends, and my out of town pals -- I have no clue what is going on in their lives. Not to mention I don't study as hard or go the extra mile at work -- because hey, i've got life figured out. I am happy.

Until…I'm not. I read an article recently via The Atlantic about meaning versus happiness. Happiness…it's this thing we all chase. But happiness is temporary. We have it until we don't. When we're happy -- we're investing less in others, we're focused in on ourselves and less aware of how our actions impact the people around us. Happiness is the here and the now. But meaning -- now that is something worth searching for.

Because when the happy has become absent in my romantic relationships, they begin to fall apart. They've lacked enough meaning for both parties. And I'm finally beginning to understand why people get married.  (Though this is another post). It creates a deeper level of meaning. You stay in it even though you aren't the happiest you've ever been because it isn't just about you anymore.

My friends -- they've never stopped showing me that kind of deep, meaningful love.

I recently hopped on the Girls bandwagon and am in my first season, basking in the glory that is Marnie + Hannah's relationship. 

We are Hannah + Marnie. Or I am at least. I'm in my 20s, and messing up incessantly. Putting every romantic relationship I've ever had before my friends. And at the end of it all, they are still somehow here...for countless hours on the phone, or snuggled up with me on the couch, drinking wine, and telling me how fabulous I am -- despite every selfish, shitty, immature thing I've done.

So here -- my dears -- is to our friends in our 20s. 

Some of the greatest loves we will probably ever know.