That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.

— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

 

I have been thinking about love a lot recently — not the infatuation I feel for people sometimes or the kind of love I feel but cannot fit any tag onto or be expressed into words. The love that leads to a relationship, the one that comes with status and responsibilities; that connection that transcends beyond the bond and conforms to society’s standards. These thoughts occasionally overwhelm me to the point I wonder if there’s something inherently wrong with me or if I’m missing out on a fundamental part of life. Apparently, it’s not so common to see someone my age who has never been in a relationship.

I was not born into love; I know nothing of romantic love. The kind of love I know very well, however, is one of silence, shame, and endurance. And what I have learned about such a kind of love is that it devours you. It is dependable, surviving on other people’s well-being, and this kind of love has served as a daily reminder that love alone is rarely enough.

Love is an uncharted territory to me. To experience it fully means to surrender to the unknown. It is a ticking bomb that can explode at any moment, throwing yourself at your lover’s mercy, hoping that they will be kind enough, and considerate enough. To the girls like me who have been unsafe in places that were supposed to protect us, we can’t dare live like that. Remaining in control is how we survive. We can’t innocently ask, “What’s the worst that can happen?” because we know too well that the worst has happened and potentially will again. This fear of the unknown has crippled me; I can only love from afar. I once read somewhere that to love something is to give whatever you are comfortable giving, and I agree. To the brief connections I have ever had, all I have ever felt comfortable giving was distance, and whenever that was not enough, I have run. I am a fast runner; I sense signs like an antelope being hunted, each heartbeat a reminder not to get caught, not to stay long in one place, to be no ones.

The first time I had a crush on a boy, I was 13. Until then, boys were a constant relic of the evil they are capable of doing. Young and confused, I loathed feeling that kind of way for a stupid boy. The way my heart would skip every time he grinned at me disgusted me; it felt like my heart was betraying my mind. So, I fought it with everything in me. I suppressed it somewhere far inside of me and my heart was unable to reach it again until I was 22 years old. It was awakened by three simple words.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. On one of his random visits to my office, which I feigned not to like too much, yet secretly relished, we were having an ungodly conversation on a sunny day. As he sat across from me, he said, “Consent is sexy,” and just like that, I fell like a fool. Those words, which were not more than just a plain truth, had me in a chokehold. I knew then and there that I would give an arm for this man who understood that my body was only mine to give. I guess that’s what happens when your boundaries have been crossed before.

I’ve also harbored affections on imaginary men predominantly written by women, a carefully scripted wish of what women hope for. During my adolescence, I read a lot of romance novels with happy endings. However, the kind of love they all represented was the same thing Narnia and Hogwarts represented, an imaginary realm in which I could get lost whenever I wanted an escape but I never allowed it to be anything more, most especially an expectation. My teenage self believed that such an experience was not for her. It was all beyond the bounds of her reality — unattainable therefore deemed unworthy of pursuit.

Feelings have a way of fucking things up — I learned that the hard way. The first time my best friend told me he had feelings for me I knew something had become undone. I couldn’t figure out how just yet. I could have lived without romantic love, I had never known it anyway, but with his friendship, I was not so sure. I knew I loved him or that I could love him — whatever way he meant when he said he loved me and asked if we could give it a try but that was of little importance, the sanctity of heaven we gave each other was so sacred that I dared not contaminate it with even the tiniest taint. To this day I still remember the ache I felt in my chest when we stopped talking. We rekindled our friendship a few months later but even now it still feels like I am stitching something back together but the thread keeps slipping through. Perhaps it is the love’s grand design, if you cannot have it all, you can’t have half of it either.

I find myself weighing whether I should have gone through with it, allowing it to unfold like in those movies where you know the villain will end up dying but you keep watching to see how they meet their fate. There’s a constant debate with this more reasonable girl inside my head, a girl that has somehow stayed, unyielding through it all. I ask her, “If a happy ending isn’t an absolute, is it still worth pursuing if grieving what could have been hurt as deeply as a heartbreak?” I like to think of it as a loss mitigation. She, in response, poses questions back as if expecting me to uncover answers within them. She questions who I am if I don’t define myself by how I have faced my fears. I say that I am a commander who knows she cannot win the battle, so she chooses to save her soldiers. I chose to run away.

“You are a coward,” she shouts.
“A proud one,” I shout back.

It is a relentless circle, but one thing remains clear: he deserved way more than my usual patterns.

I feel a wide range of emotions. I’ve never questioned them. Yet, the expression of these feelings into the world requires me to weave them into words. Only in naming and categorizing them can they exist to others. Each tag carrying with it the weight of expectations of what the space that I share with those I love should resemble. To confine these connections within the parameters of romantic, platonic, and forbidden queer love while understanding the necessity, it feels limiting. It is a constraint that lessens the depth of the deep emotions that flood my heart.

I am older now, the days of young crushes and infatuations are far behind me, as it is as they say, merely a lack of information. Yet through all these pieces of fleeting connections, I have discovered an essential truth about myself, my heart’s capacity to utterly fall in love without any reservation. This revelation as comforting as it is, lives alongside the knowledge of my inability to sustain this love, or even recognize its very presence sometimes and that, perhaps will always be my cross to bear. I am afraid that behind my attempt to make sense of it all lies a haunting envy for people who never have to question this kind of love. I envy how they survive heartbreak after heartbreak. They are better than me, stronger than me. I worry that no one can see me or accept me and as I stubbornly refuse to give half of me, I worry that my struggle to understand this common aspect of life is proof enough that I don’t deserve to experience it.

What I am trying to remind myself as I write this is that everyone’s journey is different and there’s no set timeline for when one should experience certain aspects of life. Even with these fears and doubts, I am worthy of love. Even with scars and traumas, I deserve to be seen. I want to remind myself that what feels right, feels right when it does and it does not have to conform to anything. I can love and be loved without feeling like I’m missing the serenity and validation that come from doing everything the way it’s deemed to be done. I am completely convinced of my capacity to recognize love whenever I encounter it and that alone is more than enough. Lastly, I want to remind myself that as I attempt to live this life fully, it is okay to step into the unknown, and that when the fear becomes too much, I can always write them away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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