A Taste of Something Sweeter...

Why is love so complicated? We aspire to it, we covet it, we’re told it’s the ultimate and the pinnacle of human achievement in terms of finding happiness and fulfillment, yet we complicate and taint it in so many ways. If not for the fact that sex feels so damn good and the act itself is not tied directly to the emotional feelings of people having it, the human race would no doubt have died out long ago, or would rapidly be going extinct. We search for weeks, months, sometimes years to find someone that we can devote ourselves to and too often we wind up settling for the first person we can stand to be in the same room with for more than five minutes without being compelled into projectile vomiting or wanting to strangle them to within an inch of their lives. So much pressure, even just telling someone you love them, the connotation has been built up into something to heavy and almost burdensome and the words seem to hold the weight and gravity of collapsing stars. The first time you find the courage to say them to your significant other, it’s as much an expression of your emotional state as it is a more heavily veiled hope for validation that what you think you’re feeling is something real. We’ve diluted ourselves to the point that we no longer know what love really feels like, we never commit or connect in any meaningful way and the best we can muster in most cases is a willingness to forego personal ego in favor of showing a sliver of vulnerability.

I know firsthand how terrifying it is to be genuinely naked in front of someone that you hope will not betray your trust or take for granted the risk you’ve taken in opening up that much. It’s almost crippling in the amount of fear and trepidation that it engenders. For most, finding someone that will penetrate the walls, sneak past the guards, and infiltrate our defenses into the deepest recesses of our true being, a place even most of us are too scared to tread, is little more than a pipedream and all the same as much a debilitating prospect as it is something we hope for with fervent intensity. We want to find that person, to be able to shed the armor we wear even when clothes do not adorn our shoulders, and yet for all that want, we can’t give blind trust. The compromise usually ends up with us doing our best to devote ourselves in a way that eventually will build love. The old idea of two people seeing each other across a crowded room and experiencing instant attraction to something more than the physical attributes of each other, our society regards it as cynical romanticism and nothing more than a fairy tale. We’ve complicated it far more than it needs to be. But fear can be as powerful as love, in some cases even more so because of the things it takes from us. It can knock our knees right out from under us and leave us wondering what the hell happened. We wind up spending more time trying to figure out how it all fits together and actively seeking blind ignorance to the disparity, willing and wishing away the gap. Love is scary, I won’t argue it. I chose fear more than once; hell I chose addiction and called it love. I’m far from being the poster child for a healthy relationship or even the high water mark for what a romantic should be. Too often I throw all of myself into a dynamic and hope that when my head comes back up for air, she’s still there smiling. Sadly I’ve wound up floundering and almost drowning a few times too many, but at least I got my feet wet.

We don’t pine anymore, we don’t long for someone with genuine intensity; feeling that they complete us. Falling in love is something that happens against our will, and for me it’s usually most intense when I’ve tried to fight or ignore the impulse. But I’ve thought about it extensively of late, having reached a point where I’m no longer protected from my own safeguards, and recently having had a massive break through following a bombshell realization and a night that bordered on pure insanity, I’ve reached a massive epiphany. For all the bluster and blunder we ascribe to it, love is a very simple thing. Perhaps the most beautiful and simplistic description I’ve found reads: Love is composed of a single soul inhaviting two bodies. Aristotle is the quoted speaker of that little nugget and despite its being almost twenty-five hundred years old, I feel it’s as true now as it would have been the day he said it. It’s equality and recognition, respect and trust, vulnerability and openness. Love is letting it all hang out because the person you’re with is you. They’re your reflection, your ideal self, the better part of you that you never knew was missing. It’s no more complicated than that. You don’t need a reason to love someone, you just let yourself do it. For those that have someone to hold close, to call their own, someone waiting at home for them with a smile and warm gesture, treasure them above all else, and don’t just go through the motions, commit yourself every day to a better tomorrow. Finding someone that tolerates you is easy, finding someone that will make you a better person in spite of yourself, now that’s the real trick. There may not be someone out there for everyone, I’m still convinced I’m dying alone but I’m okay with that. But those that have managed to find someone that touches them in a way that defies words and goes beyond physical or emotional and to a level that boggles the mind and still leaves the stomach leaping when they walk into the room, know the value of what you have, and never take it for granted.