Love

I've been dreading this one. Have been putting off writing it.

It's a complicated thing love. No matter how simple the hippies claim it to be, or how simple they want it to be... or how simple we all desperately want it to be. It's complicated.

Over the years of my life I've spent a great deal of time studying the nature of romantic entanglement. Cause that's what I want to write about right now, not familial or platonic love, but proper romance. I have a lot of family that love me, both those I'm blood related to and not. I have a number of very dear friends who I have a deep love and respect for.

But I'm missing the thing I want the most. The one I've craved since I was a little boy. Love. What I've always wanted is to have somebody feel for me what I feel for them. To wake up in the morning wrapped in the arms of someone who would rather be no other place. I need to be wanted in that way.

Now I'm under no delusions that this is some shortcut to a happy life or the reason for our existence. Though there was a time that that was absolutely the case. I grew up the oldest of three sons, and until the first year of college I had a crippling fear of girls. If a girl batted her eyes at me I'd have a panic attack cause I didn't know what to do.

This is no longer the case.

However the romanticizing of... well... romance is something that I've never fully been able to shake. That unfulfilled promise of happily ever after. That desire to feel something for lack of a better word, "real". I understand that a relationship is about hard work and a willingness to remain together, but I've seen that "relationship" and "love" are far too rarely hand in hand.

On an intellectual level I understand this. But the heart wants what the heart wants.

I am deeply prone to infatuation. A low cut shirt and pretty smile can make my heart go pitter pat. I am prone to intense crushes. Many of my relationships started out deeply wildly emotionally intense... Until they weren't. There are a few I miss and would probably handle things differently, but that's for another topic.

This is about capital L Love. The "L Word" I've heard it called in hushed and frantic whispers. I hesitate to call this "True Love" as that has all kinds of other emotional and logical baggage attached to it. But I suspect that that is what I'm seeking but unable to find. Well at least find with any form of staying power.

I've been in love twice in my life. The proper kind. The fairy tale kind. Once with a Lovelorn Paladin. And once more cause I was a fool.

And how do I know that it was that way? "True love"?

Two reasons.

One: It felt just like the story books describe. It was transcendant and unlike anything I've known before or since. The feeling of destiny rattling around waiting to burst from my test. Like all the things that had drawn me to every woman I'd ever cared for, everyone I'd ever been attracted too, had been distilled into these wondrous creatures before me.

And two: Cause after how badly they ended for me, after how much pain it caused... I still feel it. The hollow ache of a fate denied. Coupled with the memory of true transcendant joy. I can't move past it. Not a day goes by that they don't cross my mind with a small ache in my heart. I want to speak out to them but something stops me. Something tells me that the time isn't right.

And I wonder if it ever will be.

Cause here's the thing, I've sought it out even when it terrified me. Even when passing a note or saying hello was like facing a blender of flaming blades I screw up my fist and charged ahead. Sought it out.

Never had the right timing though. But that's not the point.

Love is something that can bind two people together like nothing else can. Something as simple as a touch or a kiss from the one you love can be more thrilling than any other act with someone else. Or so I would assume. I've been with people I cared deeply about, but those dread two...

It's difficult for me to talk about this subject, because in all that seeking, all the striving, the most common experience I have had is pain.

A hundred flavors of agony I have endured. And inflicted a half dozen more. This quest after the "One" (which I know there are far more then one) has lead me into the light and back down into the dark.

I've been dreading writing this. Even as I write these words I'm tearing up in a way that only I can see. And for some reason known only to the most distant and fictional gods, I'm sharing this on the public square.

Letting you see the rainbows in my tears, and the shape of the coagulated clouds I'm bleeding.

I hope they're pretty.