Ruminations on a romance

Can my thoughts and emotions which I hold so profound really be diagnosed as something as banal as jealousy?

Do we love love or the person we are in love with? Is there a difference, and if so, how do we tell them apart?

As I grow older and we continue to play Russian Roulette with this love that we shared, I look to this question for guidance, as if an answer exists allowing me to characterize and categorize this mysterious phenomenon in my life.

Romantic words are clichés that inevitably leave something out, and I don’t want to conceal anything. I’d love to end a poem like that, but fuck its not that easy. I have doubts, and I have issues. How can I be so afraid of losing you for good when I’m not even convinced its what I want? Jealousy? Maybe I’m the cliché. Maybe this is just typical male shit being said for the infinite time in a slightly varied way. I am simultaneously convinced that plenty of women exist with whom I could blissfully and lovingly spend the rest of my days, and also that I could have that same experience with you. And I am also equally convinced that were either option to materialize I would have times until I die when I long for the other way.

There are certain life skills, I’m talking psychologically and emotionally too, that make you a better more complete person whether you ever need to use them or not. I don’t want to need the one I am in love with, because then my motivations would always be in doubt.

See, we developed ourselves as people while together in a solitary bind. And though we felt, as humans, a much closer to complete project, we had never experienced these new people out on their own separate from one another. And we knew that this itch, though small and ignorable at the time, would only grow and would not cease unless scratched. So we picked one time of transition, of which life grants you many during these years, and we began to examine our itches. We separated our lives. With certain possessions holding significant symbolic value yet no individual owner, it was not an easy task. But we did it. And certain itches disappeared at first touch, while others developed into a rash. Its the ones that have lingered that make me wonder. Do I accept that these are permanent, or assume there is another woman who can make them go away. Or is more time simply the answer. Because anyone who says they are sure without a doubt is lying to you, or to themselves, or both. That’s my truth anyway.

To love is a verb, but to be in love is a noun. And you need a second willing person reciprocating that love to make this noun exist, otherwise there is nothing to be in. You are in love alone, and that’s the worst place to be. This is why calling sex “making love” is the strangest thing. That’s not how love is made. Love is made with time, commitment, respect, shared experience, honesty. That’s how love is made. If I didn’t try these past three years I wouldn’t know, but I did, and I do. What would have happened if I met one of those potential others? I don’t know, I didn’t, and I don’t need to wait anymore to see if I do.

When we first fall in love a new place inside of us is opened, and is filled with the total experience of this love. And when this experience ends, that place closes up. It closes up tight to hold on and grasp what remains inside of us of that love. And we keep this space closed, thus shutting it down for other people to enter, until someone somehow manages to pry it open. And then it is full once again, and is holding on to someone knew. But only a rare few of us can re-open this space while still on their own, and empty it, and clean it out while still waiting for a new resident.

I was able to dive freely into all these experiences and girls because I knew this space was not open for them. You occupied it, and, maybe subconsciously, I knew there wasn’t that ultimate risk because I wouldn’t let it come to pass. But what if it did? What if it does? The top is being loosened with time and so many hands twisting and prying at it. But that space has always been saved for you, whether I wanted to or meant to or not. So please Karen, come back home. I may have changed some furniture and repainted the walls, but the feel is the same, the smell is the same, the space is still yours, and it misses you. Come home Karen, I miss you too.