Relationships

IT’S ALL GOOD

I let you open the door for me. You think you have me more than you do. I play it violently sweet; I play nothing at all.

But you think things.

I got a hangover from your cheap whine. But okay baby, tell me how it is. Tell me all about the day you spent building a castle in the clouds. All about the games you do not play. All about the she’s that came before me. All about the he’s you can’t wait to be. All about the worlds that divide your brain in two so you can sleep at night.

You memorized a pattern of freckles on my arm and you know what it means when I bite my lip. But you will not know me.  You saw my body in that dress and you know what I like to do on a Saturday. But you do not have me. You order me a drink I like and you can tell a stranger my story. But you can not love me.

Because I am not yours. I never was. Capital m-Mine; capital f-Fine.

 

 

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OVERSIZED

Has your heart ever been so heavy,
that you feel as though you can’t breathe,
that with every beat it grows in size,
until there’s no more room left in your body,
for anything but its ache,
ache,
aching?

MS. EXTROVERT

The words popped off the screen and smacked into my retinas. It was worse than I imagined.

The air in the apartment was more stale than usual that evening, my respite was the humid summer air, the glow of the moon, the dying stars. I was trying to escape my worst thoughts, the thoughts that became things. Their betrayal, sticky and sickening, began but yards from my body. A body, that oddly insisted upon drifting intermittently between the land of dreams and the land of demons.

I fed upon food that made me ill. I drank concoctions that dulled my senses. I poured light into black holes. Had I known what I know now…

I’ve been branded with a mark I wish only to scrub off. Cut off, if I must. On occasion it burns hot but most days it’s just a dull ache in the shoulder blades. My load is heavier now. More to carry, less hands to help.

But there is one bit of freedom. What terrible friends and lovers I’ve rendered into ghosts.

THAT TIME I DECIDED UPON DELUSIONS INSTEAD FOR THE STORY, AT LEAST, FOR THE UNIVERSE

We smoked the screen to make it what it was to be. Now to know it in my memory… – Bon Iver

I should have just stayed away.

I knew it too. All along. That’s the worst, isn’t it? When you feel something so viscerally in your bones you can’t quite explain it or directly point to it but, it’s there. Like a ghost in your mind, haunting you as it floats back and forth, in and out. But no, it can’t be. No he must. No she isn’t. And so it begins, the lies we tell ourselves to keep the loves we want.

Of all of the terrible things in this world, at this moment, I feel as though hindsight is the most terrible. It rips away your self-pity, rips away the distractions you’ve piled high around yourself, rips away the shaky foundation you’re trying to stand tall on, and it says in its cruelest of voices, “Look, you tiny idiot. Look, you beautiful little fool. It was there all along. Right in front of your face.”

But, we smoke our screens. We cloud our glasses. We live in and out of our delusions because for the moment they are more beautiful than the truth. We forget all of the time that we craft our own realities, and life is never kind when our experiences are proven to be just that…our reality, our experience. Not the reality, not the true experience.

And from that moment forward, you can see nothing as the same. The jig is up, the fantasy ruined, the veil ripped, and all you are left to do is look. Over, and over, and over. Because what is passion without torture? Look at the text(s) that said it all. Look at the mouth that told explanations that raised your eyebrow. Look at the shoes you wore the last time you slept, beside them, soundly in your own ignorance. Look at your vacant eyes in the mirror and sigh at your pathetic reflection. Look at those moments, lies though they were, when you had a love in your arms. On your mouth. In your head. In your bones. At least. At least. At least.

Oh, the excuses, rationality, and delusions we cast upon our eyes, our hearts, our minds when we feel what we perceive to be love. Woe to the intense folk, the sensitive folk, the trusting folk, the hopeful folk. Woe always, forever and ever, for the lambs amongst the lions amongst the lambs.

And the most woe upon the little lamb that thought herself a lion as she ventured into the den, unafraid and willing and wanting.

LOVEOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

We spend our entire lives studying in efforts to ensure success.

As young children, we study and learn the alphabet so we can communicate our needs and desires. As slightly older children, we spend 12 years of our lives in public and private systems to study and learn subjects, skills, and statistics that will help us in our futures. As young adults, we study and learn to pursue specific careers. As adults, we study and learn to stay in those careers. As spiritual seekers, we study and learn from a variety of texts and teachers to be the best human we can be. And as parents, we study and learn in order to not fail our children.

No matter what we pursue in life, we know that studying will lead to success.

So why then, when it comes to the hardest subject in the the world—love—do we feel as though we can just wing it? Why do we believe that we are well-equipped to handle relationships (marital, familial, platonic, etc.) just because we’re alive? Is it brain chemicals? movies? simply because no one talks about how hard it is? because no one knows how easy that hardness should be?

Yes, relationships are work. True love requires the abandonment of the ego, honest and loving communication, trust, loyalty, second chances, and a delicate balance of our fullest dedication to another human being and honoring our independent minds and free, wild hearts. It requires a bit of universe magic and a whole lot of maturity.

And when you think about the average teenager starting their mating process when their brains aren’t even fully fused together yet, you begin to wonder why we don’t teach a course about love alongside sex ed.

We have written about love for years, conducted science experiments to determine its roots and our own personal experiments of trial and error, and in light of all that, still don’t consider it a subject that warrants proper studying.

I am changing that. Well, for me at least.

Starting now—let’s be real, sometime in the near future—I am going to become a student of love and if I’m lucky, emerge a loveologist. I will read articles, books, conduct an interview or two, geek out over books and wine with friends in a loveology study group, and apply what I’ve learned in efforts to be a better coworker, sister, friend, aunt, and daughter. And in the future once again, girlfriend, then wife, then mother.

I’m going to promise to share my findings for two reasons: 1) writing is how I grow 2) my blog has been barren for far too long.

I am excited for this journey. Because everyone wants love. And if we give out a little more everywhere we go, everyone lights up.

MEMO RE: A CAFFEINATED SPARK

Subways and crashing waves and cicadas were the soundtrack

To nights spent under trees and stars and skyscrapers

Where cold hands clutched colder hands

And Instagrammed memories seared onto my soul.

He guided me away from past associations

And led me back to my wild heart

Yet through it all we remained unable to attain

A full sense of each other as one.

And so it went

Ripped apart, a holy day,

Then loose ends tied back together.

Ancient paths lay between us and

Fate’s strings led our swift birth and slow death as

We were created to destroy

Old ties and birth new beginnings and

To take one another to grand heights and new lows.

And though it is true that now

My heart is with another, his arms around one too

I still wonder if I will ever lose this taste

Of my mouth wondering why covenants cannot be broken.

LITTLE SPARK

“What makes for a better relationship: passion or dedication?”

Cursor goes up and down between the two like the stock market went in 2008. Up down. Up down. Zig zag. Zig zag. This one; no that one.

I chose dedication; it was a lie. More so a half-truth.

Maybe I am idealistic, maybe I am a bit naive. But why does society pit passion against dedication and say, “Pick one.” Why are the two mutually exclusive?

Why does it make me unreasonable to want the passion of a Latin lover with the dedication of an American Puritan? 

I have my theories: love becomes more complicated when you have to stir multiple pots at once. Flitting from love affair to love affair in hot pursuit of passion is much easier than being in hot pursuit of passion with the one affair you dedicated yourself to.

It is easier to flee before the dirty socks that never find themselves to the hamper. It is easier to wear sweats day in and day out than to remember to relish and cultivate sexy moments that once were so frequent.

Maybe it is time we admit we are all a little lazy in love. Maybe it is time we admit we do not want to stir two pots. Maybe it is time to fire the agency in charge of marketing the “passionate dedication of yourself to another” and find a new one.

Maybe it could be us instead.