Most days, I believe that romantic love will never find me in this lifetime. I'll admit that is a pessimistic way to think but I can't help but believe that I will continue to navigate this lifetime without a life partner. I do not believe that there is “someone for everyone” as much as I would like for that to be true. When I think of my past dating history, I am disappointed and filled with regret by the type of people I let have access to me. I forgive myself though. 

I think of three lines from Warsan Shire’s “34 Excuses For Why We Failed at Love,”

Line 1: I was lonely so I did lonely things.

Line 15: I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things. 

Line 31: Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you.

My past is plagued by loneliness. Instead of embracing my forced solitude, I chose to fill the void in my heart with people who made me feel even lonelier. I dated people who didn’t see me past my appearance, people who didn’t care to learn me, and people who didn’t treat me delicately. I entertained people who were not deserving of my time, my heart, and my wisdom. I held on to a lot of relationships for a lot longer than I should have and most shamefully, I did a lot of begging. I begged people to stay, to understand, to hear me, and to choose me. I think above everything, I just wanted someone to choose me back.

In “Questions For The Woman I Last Night,”

Warsan Shire poses a series of questions that always put me in a deep introspective state:

why do you find the unavailable so alluring?

where did it begin? what went wrong? and who made you feel so worthless?

if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you?

all this time, you were begging for love silently

thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you

you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin

I think of all the times I was being expressive, vulnerable, and honest to people who genuinely didn’t care about me.

And then I wish I could snatch those moments back.

It has taken me time to learn that everyone doesn’t deserve to have full access to my mind and definitely not to my heart. I approach new relationships with more caution now. I still maintain my vulnerability but I reveal very little about myself until I feel completely comfortable. Trust is something that must be earned and not given freely.

Lately, I have received a lot of comments about being “guarded,” but how could I not be in a world that punishes those who have open hearts? I am cursed to live in a society filled with people that think vulnerability is a weakness, when in fact it is a strength.

I remember reflecting on someone I dated with an ex-friend and expressing feelings of sadness to which she replied to me “I just hate how you were so vulnerable with him.” The comment annoyed me deeply because if I cannot be vulnerable with someone that I am dating then what is even the point?

I have noticed that people want to be loved but they do not want to be open, honest, or trusting- all things that create the foundation for love to flourish. Where is the love if it is not within those things?

I have seen love show up in my life in many different ways, just never in a romantic way but I am learning to be okay with that. I have seen the relationships that people call loving and I can tell you, I want no parts of most of what is glamorized in the media and in our current society. I want to love freely and I do not want to be burdened by love. Love is not possessive, painful, or obsessive. It is not abusive. It is not something that makes you shrink, question yourself, or become a shell of yourself. Love expands us. It can frighten us but only in a thrilling way. It questions us- challenges us to grow, and most importantly it brings us closer to ourselves.

I think few people know what love really is and I think even fewer people have experienced it. I frequently think about bell hooks writing in All About Love, “love and abuse cannot coexist at the same time.” bell hooks goes on to discuss how many of us don’t want to accept that notion because we would have to accept that the people that we thought have loved us and hurt us don’t actually know what love is and therefore most of us have never actually been loved. 

I've had a lot of people talk to me about their experiences with love and in my head I just think about how everything they have described is not love. I think about how people put the word love in the same sentence as the words pain, distrust, and disrespect and see nothing wrong with it.I don’t think anyone’s love story has to be perfect nor do I think perfect love stories exist but I do to ask people to sit with their experiences with love and see if it actually matches the picture they have painted in their head.

Ideally, I would like to float in love. I saw someone say that once and I have thought about it ever since. To fall in love gives love a suddenness. Falls happen too quickly and are always accompanied with some element of pain. There’s no pain that comes with floating, only ease. You could float for a while but you can’t fall for a while. I would like to float in love. I would like to feel the same ease that I feel when I am immersed in a body of water. To know that even when waves come towards me, in the end I will be okay.  I know what I want in a partner. I ask for what I can provide and more. I crave compassion, understanding, kindness, and unwavering respect. I am not actively seeking romantic love because I do believe it’ll find me when I least expect it. I just hope to greet it with open arms and an open heart.

I don’t think perfect love stories exist because perfect relationships don’t exist. I don’t think love itself can be perfect because it needs space to be nurtured in order to evolve. The space to discover and nurture a floating love is the most anyone can ask to find them. 

☪︎

published June 9, 2022