First Comes Love

 I wrote about getting comfortable feeling and expressing love in '08, and a year later I wrote about the pressure to find it. Time for a revisit. My ideas of love have grown up.

Love is real. I feel it, immensely, for the wonderful people I'm blessed to know. I understand making loyal, serious, whole hearted investments in the lives of others, because I do. I express love for others in word and deed. I just haven't shared it with one exclusive, romantic partner, yet. Not because I don't want to, but because wanting it doesn't mean it's available.

I am attracted to artistic and intellectual curiosity, to those who have used their time on this planet to drink deeply of all that it offers, allowing it to change and alter them.Within us there are conflicts and contrasts, stories, deep things we don't always want to share or feel we can. Yet all this makes it more difficult; the more a person is developed by time and experience, the more articulate their companionship needs become, and the less likely it seems.

It happens, though. Freaks find love. Freaky love can be the most inspiring kind. My favorite case-in-point: Bjork and Matthew Barney. 

Thus far, my romantic encounters have been unsustainable and not marriage bound, for reasons I am solid with. I am accountable to my convictions about that. I have things I am striving for, prior to bringing anyone else into the picture - that are eternally important to me, and I'm getting there. The idea of someone else coming into the picture is also becoming increasingly appealing. There are tiny beginnings of space for another person in my world. But there's a catch; I'd rather live and die alone than settle for a fake love* and have to lie to myself about my daily reality. Discerning prospects is half the battle. Actually sticking to the battle, or not seeing it as a battle... that's a part of the equation I don't usually make it to.

This year has hosted many brushes with love - as a concept, an illusion, a bliss, a reality, something actualized, something given up. Saying goodbye when a romantic situation just isn't right is so difficult. Especially when it's too grey to identify exactly why it isn't right, you're both comfortable and relatively happy...yet you just know it isn't foreva-eva. So it's suck it up, be brave, cut the tie, have faith in the future and soldier onward. More painful in the short term, less in the long run.

Gah.... I'm going to go eat more post-breakup consolation ice cream now. I am not kidding.


;)
JH

* Music alert: I highly recommend listening to Fake Plastic Trees, acoustic version, by Radiohead. And check out Bjork's Vespertine album.