Lover

So, when I first started this blog back in April (take that, Mr. Christiansen! “You’ll last for 3 months” well guess what? It’s been 5 months), one of my early ideas for a post was some grand thesis about love and everything about it. At its heart (haha) was one of my, at the time, best friends. One day I looked at him and began thinking about archetypes and tarot cards. You know, the knight, the priestess, the wizard, the hierophant. The lovers. The roles that characters and people fall into, and the traits we allow to define them. He was always someone I could never quite understand or grasp, so I thought about what he was for a long moment, and despite him being so many things, I settled on something slightly subversive from what people might initially characterize him as: the Lover. Not necessarily dulcet, cloying, or tender, the way the word might suggest, but passionate. The Orpheus, with enough love to charm stones to tears, but also so much love that it blinded him. The Romeo, a foolish child in love, with a poison flask in his pocket. The Cowherd, hopelessly in love with a girl across a river of stars. And on and on I could have gone, about how completely over-the-top he was about his love for his long-term girlfriend, and how I saw it as something that would eventually destroy him, like the way he felt genuine physical pain when he was uncertain about something in their relationship, or the way he stopped eating when they took a “break” from their relationship. I hope my view of him is clear and fair: I admired his fervent devotion and their relationship, but I held equal apprehension about if it was what love should really look like and if it could persevere against any trial. So central to my entire post was my disagreement with and reflection on his oft-repeated thesis that, “If you really love someone, you can make literally anything work,” a statement born from his complicated relationship and his desire to make it work with his girlfriend no matter what.

And then they broke up. So much for “you can make anything work.” And this time it was different from every other time they had separated. This was final and crushing. Aside from the emotional fallout cast on his now-ex, whose pain breaks my heart, it also ruined everything I was writing. How could this be “the Lover?” How could what he did (which will remain unexplained because I don’t have all the details and do not want to spread rumors) be the actions of a boy once so in love? I cannot speak to it at all. We used to tell each other everything, but he disappeared from my life a while before the break-up for whatever reason, so I have no clue what he was thinking. That's a whole different pain, but whatever. People leave.

Anyways, the whole thing threw my slowly-growing compendium about love out the window. His thesis was the only constant I could find in that inscrutable equation of love, and then he just disappeared, leaving me with only questions. So I retitled the document I’m writing this in right now to “Lover - scrap,” deciding that what I originally wrote was unsalvageable. I had nothing to write about anymore, though at least I could easily say that his entire “thesis” was crap. But last night, when calling a dear friend at about 2 am, I was inspired to rewrite this story. To put it all together again and find my own story. She said, “I think you have trouble distinguishing different types of love,” which recalled something her fiancé said to me a few months prior: “I’m not sure you know what love is.” Out of context, they both sound… harsh. And they kind of were, but in the kind of casual, biting way that good, honest wisdom is. Straight to the point, cutting deep and hitting some specific piece of your heart in a way that you won’t forget. Of course, the two of them are qualified to speak on the topic because they have the most successful relationship of any of my peers, and I think they’re completely right about me. So what this post is really about is about trying to untangle what love is and what the different types of love are. It’s just about love.

Well, it’s a weighty topic. Where do we start? Well, with Ethan Hawke, of course. In a once-viral clip from an interview with Amelia Dimoldenberg, he shared his thoughts on unrequited love: “The one who’s in love always wins… it doesn’t matter if you get your heart broken… the sun doesn’t care whether the grass appreciates its rays, right? It just keeps on shining.” Far be it from me to compare myself to the sun, but if Ethan Hawke says it, can I really argue? That is to say, I think I am always that fool in love. I’ve been institutionally declared a serial proximity lover. As a good friend once said, “Yeah, you’d probably be a hoe–if you actually got with any of the people you talked about.” I just get very attached very quickly, and I cling to the familiar, even when I probably shouldn’t. I love my family, even though I often wish I could harden my heart toward them. I loved my school, even though it was a blessing and a curse for 13 years. I loved my old workplace despite it being a constant mess and its infuriating corporate overlords. And of course, worst of all is my track record of falling in love with my best friends. It’s happened a lot, and it’s never gone well. Maybe it’s some sort of evolutionary remnant of the scarcity mindset once necessary for survival; when resources (in my case, people and places) are scarce, you have to become very protective and thus, attached to whatever you do have. I wish I could dissect it beyond that, but I don’t think I can really explain it, short of someone actually dissecting me.

Whatever the case is, it’s something I try to resist. “Guard your heart,” my mother says, but maybe I’m just weak. It makes me feel like such a dope. I always call myself a dog, loyal to whoever gives me some attention. If you’re around, nice to me, and attractive? I’ll bark for you. I’ll do whatever you want. Okay, ew (Unless..?). But you know what I mean. You could have me wrapped around your finger and whipped if you’re just a bit nice to me. Or as one Instagram post I saw last night said, “I get attached like a stray cat you accidentally fed once.” Someone else (actually, the aforementioned guy–remember, we used to be friends?) during a long talk about love while we sat on the plane to Seattle, told me that I’m like a sponge. I just soak up whatever you put me around.

So here I am, a sponge and a stray dog. My love is for everything and nothing. I give it out like candy. Beware, future relationships! Is it a good thing, like Hawke says? Or does it mean my love means nothing? Does it mean I don’t know what real love is? Is any of it really romantic love, or can I just not tell what different types of love are? It’s like Haddaway said: what islove? (“Baby, don’t hurt me / Don’t hurt me no more” 🎶). Well, I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world. Whatever the love is, I don’t think it’s badto love. I mean, who wants to be miserable all the time and hate everything they’re around? I know so many people are like that, but it just seems exhausting. So yeah, even though work and school sometimes suck, I can still love them for the many loveable things I find in them. In the same way, I unabashedly love America. It may be a flawed country, but it’s still my country. How can I make it better if I don’t love it?

But with people, I don’t think there’s as much of an upside. It just kind of hurts. Sorry, Ethan Hawke, but it doesn’t feel like winning. It doesn’t feel like winning to pour your heart out to someone and lose their friendship instead, it doesn’t feel like winning to love someone you know can never love you back, and it doesn’t feel like winning to love someone who leaves. But again, maybe it’s not really love and I just don’t know how to tell. Maybe sometimes it’s just infatuation and putting too much of my life into other people. Maybe I’m just desperate to love because I know it can be the first step in being loved. Until I can figure it out, I think I’ll be destined to always love a little lopsided. To be in love with the wrong people, and maybe to not love the right people back. That hurts, so the only solace I can take is that my love is the sun, shining thanklessly on the grass. Again, don’t hate me for comparing myself to the sun: it was Ethan Hawke (Sidenote, please watch him in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I have nothing but love for everyone and everything. Everyone knows that’s not true. To be honest, I hate a lot of things. I hated how few people felt like genuine friends to me at school, I hate how alone I’ve always felt, I kind of hate practicing the piano, I hate dealing with mean or stupid people at work, I hate when other people are thoughtless, and a million other things. But if I’m really being vulnerable, I kind of just hate the experience of being alive very often. My misophonia makes almost every sound echo in my skull like a pounding drum I can never escape. If it’s not that, it’s some food I can’t eat, or some physical pain from health issues I still have no idea how to define. And beyond that, I’m tired all the time, and even though I’ve been tested for all the vitamins, I still don’t know why I don’t ever seem to want to do anything but sit down or lie in bed. I don’t say all this to just complain, although it is a little good to get it out there. My point is 1) that despite a lot of my “hatred” and frustration, beneath it is a lot of love. When I think about hating someone for too long, I start feeling guilty: they are a person too, and they probably have a family and insecurities and all sorts of terrible things that might explain why they are the way they are. Or when I hate someone for being thoughtless, it’s only because I value being thoughtful, and I think that’s ultimately a form of love. And 2) I don’t want to cast myself as some benevolent martyr, eternally suffering from loving everyone and everything too much. Instead, I am just a walking contradiction. The cynical, critical, hater who can’t seem to stop himself from being full of love.

In my original conception of this post, I was also really inspired by Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, which I think is the perfect album about love (minus “Expectations” and “My Way.” Sorry, but they are always skips for me), so please listen to it. Why is it so perfect? First of all, it shows the entire life cycle of a relationship, so it is automatically a better contender for “best album about love” since it hits on both falling in and out of love, while most albums understandably focus on only one aspect or the other. But she goes through he beginning infatuation and adoration, then the complications of vulnerability and the desire for someone else to fix you, and the slow decline of realizing you don’t work together. Obviously this isn’t how every relationship is, but I think it’s a pretty typical cycle and something I related to a little. And my favorite detail is that she subtly rewrote the album when it became a break-up album, so even her once-happy songs have undertones of something a little bit sad. “Purple” is the prime example of this, but my the most important one to me is “Stupid Song,” which is lyrically so yearn-y, but the way she sings it and the degrading moniker of “stupid song” give a bit of a sad undertone to the love. For that reason, I feel that she hit on the seemingly under-recognized fact that falling in love is not only joyful, but also incredibly sad. If you give your heart to someone else, of course it’s going to hurt; how can you give it to them, if not by reaching into your chest and tearing it out?

Throughout the album, Olivia seems to contend that love hurts. That beginning yearning is maddening, and then in the relationship, she describes feeling tied down and a loss of identity, but when it comes to an end, it also hurts and she wishes her ex loved her less, so it would hurt less. Is that what love is, at its core? Love is the thing that makes a father run in the shoes of his dead son. It’s what sent Teddy Roosevelt into the North Dakotan wilderness to build a home after his mother and wife died on the same day. It’s the thing that made me lose my best friend. But at the same time, love is one of the things that makes me want to keep living. The love of my friends and my love for my friends, and a hope that I will find the right person who will show me what romantic love truly is. For as much pain as love has caused, it has built far more than it can ever tear down. Pharaoh Khufu built a pyramid for his mother’s tomb and Shah Jahan commissioned the Taj Mahal for his deceased wife. My father married my mother and got disowned for it. Think of all the great love stories that exist in your families, which may have led to your very existence. Love is at the heart of all great art in some way. It is the thing that moves us.

So what am I saying about the nature of love? I guess that it hurts, but that it’s also incredible and worth it. REAL GROUNDBREAKING STUFF, HUH? I know it’s not. But did you know that when people see pictures of their partners, it activates the same part of their brain that is connected to our basic needs like food and water? Did you know that even though love is utterly miserable tosh that makes everything hurt, it’s the thing that makes us human?

I still don’t really know what love is, and I don’t think I know how to distinguish between different types of love either. I mean, maybe I can in my brain, but not in my heart. And I don’t know how to stop being in love when I shouldn’t be. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. What I do know is that I can be true to that love, while still trying to guard my heart. So what if I love too much? So what if it’s not returned by everyone? One day I will find the right person and more of the right people who feel the same way as me. And then, it’ll all be worth it. Until then I’m going to just try and be that sun, shining on the grass whether the grass cares or not. And when I am hateful and angry, I hope love will be the thing to keep me from turning bitter and jaded, which is something I do truly hate.

Anyways, you’ve probably read the word “love” way too many times if you’ve made it this far. But I hope I covered my bases about the topic. I appreciate you if you did read this whole thing, especially because it’s my longest post by far. I know I’m always asking for people to comment, but this time I feel even more strongly that I would love anyone’s input about anything about love.