Passion

It's a powerful word, isn't it? It encompasses a strength, just in typing it, just in saying it. When you're feeling it, it can be overwhelming.

Over the years, this word has been used to describe me, and now a lot of the times I choose it when I need that "What's one word to describe you?" answer to questions. I think, however, sometimes passionate and tenacious are entwined. I am passionate. When I fall in love, I do so completely and totally. And when I fall out of love, I do so immediately. When I take on a project, whether it's a craft item or a book, I become engrossed with it. Which is why, I truly believe, I am having a hard time in starting my next book. I know that once I do, that drive will kick in and I will be lost to anything else.

Passion lacks reason. When consumed with passion, you can't very well make thoughtful and considerate decisions. You're lost in the passion, the moment, the person. All that matters at that moment IS that moment. Nothing else. It's a fire that blazes and burns and if allowed to grow out of control, it can destroy. If left untended, it becomes this low, smoldering heat. If not stroked and teased, it eventually dies out. One moment there's heat, and then, nothing but ash.

You can love without passion. And passion without love. Some people may think that love and passion are the same thing. I assure you, they are not. Love is cozy feeling, a warmth that spreads and lasts for years, passes through generations. Love has highs and lows, peeks and valleys. Love is comforting. Love is safety, a surety of things. The knowledge that it will always be, one way or another. Like the sun rising, you know you will have love.

Now think of passion. Comforting is not something you think of when you imagine the word "passion", is it? It's immediate, it's fuel that drives us. It makes us lose all reasoning. Nothing matters at all but the moment of right now. It's like a climax, constantly on the edge, waiting and waiting and building and building and then this explosive moment that blinds you, the flashes and the lights and the sensation of a small death. You can have love without all of that. But you cannot have passion without it. And if one is not careful, passion can dance on the wire with a little friend called Obsession.

Both of them consume. Both of them control. Both of them burn you up from the inside out. The line that separates them, I believe, is very blurred.

I don't know why passion is on my mind. Well, that's a lie. I do know. But I won't tell you. I will tell you that I have been reading the Blaze line and I have no doubt that I can write this particular borderline erotica. One thing you do not find in the Blaze books (at least, I haven't so far), is love. But they drip with an overflowing amount of passion. Raw, hungry passion.

I can't get my brain to work right this morning. I haven't blogged much lately, and I'm feeling the strain for the first time in my life of getting my thoughts down on paper. It's quite the odd sensation. As Stephen King says, ever so wisely: We have to exercise our brain to write.

He's right. And he's waiting for me, so off I must go to study.

If you could only choose one to feel, which would you choose? Love or Passion? My answer: Now and always, I want to feel passion above all else.