A THOUSAND TIMES: LOVE

This week I was on a call with a friend. I asked her how she was doing. She said through gritted teeth that she was “in love with love”. She was giving me my own answer to difficult situations. She told me once that that’s one of the things she’ll never forget about me; the radiance and passion with which I told her about love and being in love with love. I realized I had started to be ashamed of love. I felt the rush of embarrassment heating up my cold blooded veins when I thought of love. Because the love I once believed ruled the world and was present in everyone and everything had lost its colour. It had drained all the blood from my once hopeful cheeks. So I told her not to make fun of me. Even though I knew that she didn’t mean it that way. I felt like I was losing my religion. Love suddenly sounded like a huge overblown, inflated and ridiculous cliché. An empty word. Zero. Love. Nada.

Love had become a superfluous word; a meaning less adjective, something people say to make you feel better, to be polite. To end a conversation. To avoid saying difficult things like. You hurt me. I don’t like you anymore. I don’t trust myself around you. I don’t know how to forgive you. I want you forever. I don’t want to be with you. I’m scared. Why couldn’t you wait for me? You are not the one I want. There’s no me without you. You’re not for me. I don’t want to lose you. You are everything to me. I want all of you. More of you. All the time. But I’m afraid you will say no. I’m sorry. That you don’t feel the same. I don’t want to look stupid. Desperate. Hungry. Eager. Thirsty. I want easy love. You’re too hard. Too demanding. You’re not enough. You’re too much. It’s complicated. I’m not enough. I’m not ready. Will you forgive me?

R.E.M started ringing in my ears, “Oh life, it’s bigger, it’s bigger than you, and you are not me. The lengths I will go to. The distance in your eyes… that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight losing my religion, oh no I’ve said too much, I haven’t said enough”. It was my first real boyfriend’s favourite band and that’s the song I remembered, losing my religion. David had the bluest eyes and I frequently took a dive in them between lectures and from old benches under trees. His eyes were the only ocean I felt confident swimming in, completely naked. My first summer of love had never been sweeter. And suddenly I start to feel as if heartbreak is the only real love I’ve ever known. I start to feel sad, I start to feel as if saying Goodbye is the only Hello love has given me – the only thing tangible and lasting about love. I wish David had been the only love of my life. The one I’m with now. I wish he was the only one I fell in love with over and over again for the past 14 years. I wish he was in love with me too. I wish that we were still together now. That I could still swim in his ocean. That he never invited me to McDonalds. Where he offered to buy me a drink. I wish he never said he was breaking up with me. After two weeks of bliss. I wish he never offered to give me the napkin to wipe my tears when they started to fall into my coffee like rain. Because I wasn’t ready. To be intimate with him. At his grandparents’ house. While they were away on holiday. I wish he understood. Why I wanted to wait. But I was not enough. So he moved on. And I stood there by the beach, watching as his waters ebbed and flowed without me

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Toni Morrison says relationships would be so much easier if we all shared the same definition of love. James Baldwin says love takes off the masks we can’t live within but fear to live without. He says love is a war, love is a struggle, and love is growing up. He says love is life and love is death. Buddhists say love is being there. Here. Love is joy and love is peace. The bible says love is kind, love is patient, keeps no record of wrong. I start to fear the look of love in your eyes. It simply takes my breath away. It makes me want to run and never look back. To dive in and never come up for air. It makes me freeze in place, to hold on, because I don’t know if you will be there or here tomorrow to pick me up, if I melt under your gaze.

I had wrapped all of my favourite things together, joy, things I like, people, experiences, places, books, movies, ideas everything I enjoyed, all the love I could get, give, everything good and beneficial to me had become, love, the one I want who wants me. When I started to look at the world through the eyes of what I loved, everything made sense. Love was not confined exclusively to a single individual. It was not about you - man. It was universal. I could be in love with life all the time if I so chose.

Now I hear Tracey Chapman’s haunting voice asking me, “Your hands don’t reach out your voice doesn’t call on me… Tell me what hardened your heart? Tell me what turned it to stone? Tell me what made you forget that you were in love with someone?”

So when you held me in your arms and our hands intertwined for a second, it was nothing for you. But for me, it was everything. Because I fell in love, with you, again.