i had a dream last night
i can't remember the dream but i remember the impression and the inflection of the voices that rang.
one thing i can say i learned last night is i don't prefer to be told what i feel before i've figured out that i feel it;
to be in love.
i never thought too hard about the concept until i was 19 and everyone around me insisted i was in love.
the reactiveness meant i was in love,
the passion meant i was in love,
the attachment meant i was in love,
but never did i say, "i'm in love with you" amongst any of the "i love you's".
mights and maybes of course, but always with one foot out the door.
two years later i found that i was never in love- i thought i could be in love, after all that's what i was told, i loved him and loved him hard; i love him to this day, but never could i say that i was in love.
and again i'm being told i'm in love, and again it doesn't feel right to me.
maybe i'm in love, i might be in love, but to be in love, i firmly know someone must sit in it with me intimately and without that reciprocity the love fades to graceful familiarity.
so i do not think i'm in love.
i cannot be in love without intimacy fluent in my language, because i cannot understand any other way.
i think i love deeply, i think i love with passion, i know i am starved of touch
but i do not think i am in love.
i've pondered everyone who i might be in love with because i so desperately want to be in love, but still i find myself detached from my attachments, engaging in game play that bottom line means i can't strap.
is it bad that the only thing i feel i'm missing out on is candle wax on her body, her cream on her bed? does me wanting sex mean i'm in love?
the answer seems so plain to me when i put it in writing.
i am selective in my desires, i have the ability to like anybody but i only like a few, and i am sexually attracted to even fewer from the lot.
love fuels my lust but i dare not sit in it, in a possessiveness i have never felt and am always taught, in an emotional hold fueled by jealousy where i am always caught by a conceited grip that loves the idea of me being in love without them feeling the same love back.
is the desire for sex love? i keep being told that my desire for sex means i'm in love but in me all i see is physical release and romance, and to me,romance is not love. romance is escape. i see friendship and lust, a lack of trust, and a voice that begs to differ at what i'm being told.
is that being in love?
i wish it was.
i wish i wish i wish i was in love!
but my only boundary between friendship and romance is whether or not i desire your friendship or romance, and while i find my love to be enough for me i daresay i've never seen romantic love that i would like to receive. i've seen jealousy and reactiveness and assumptions and conceit. but never something i would consider love. always something i would see as an escape from daily mundanity.
the boundaries that lie within me are the boundaries that say 'anyone can go! and when they want to leave let them; anyone can stay! but when i want to leave, i go'
it is my freedom that nothing lasts forever, it is my doctrine.
she told me she wants to know me forever,
but forever is a long time and i've seen forever end forever ago-
i just want to know her as deeply as i can right now, before we end as all things come to an end.
but i'm told wanting to be closer means i'm in love, and that being in love is a bad thing amongst friends; filled with tears and reactiveness, drama, tension, and repression.
no one believes that i simply want to have sex that would make me cum-
because of course to want to cum or to want to make someone else cum you simply must be in love.
i've studied the love my peers engage in, the bar between their romantic love and their friendships.
i don't like what i've seen.
i seek advice from my peers but i never listen too hard, because they have never shown me an example of a sexual relationship i would want to emulate.
love to them is filled with so much resentment, pseudo-nonchalance, being ignored and feeling tense, mind games and chasing, being lied to, getting jealous, getting reactive -arguing!- it does not at all look 'in love' to me.
it looks like what i thought in love could be when i was 19- turbulent negative emotions with slivers of light that bomb you with a bliss so intense you melt into him and think you must be in love.
but it's simply your brain finally agreeing to a moment of happiness after being put through the wringer for someone who you know will leave- whether by your credence or their own.
i now know a love that lasts begins in friendship and progresses into mutual romantic attraction, and to be in love means that both parties have decided to step into their mutual love and express it through the other in partnership.
this is not what love means to many, and i'm learning that.
it's too serious and too daunting, and being in love is light a merry, the only deciding factor being whether you want to treat them as a lover or a friend.
but i'm consistently misunderstood in the fact that with or without someone to love i am a lover, that i imbue my life with romance because romance to me is flighty and fun, that if i were in love i would simply say so, because i would know.
i'm told i require more boundaries to bind my love into the confines of a category, friend or foe, lover of loser- but i dare say everyone else needs to strip themselves of the defenses they put up against love and allow themselves to love freely.
boundaries are not walls yet i'm told to put up walls that would prevent the natural progression of feeling, and to call it a boundary.
instead of just letting feeling flow freely and allowing life to take me where it may.
love is freedom and freedom is terrifying, but i have always been dauntless in the face of risks.
i do not think i'm in love.
i've figured i cannot be within something that i am without, and while i am not without love i certainly don't feel immersed in it.
so i'm very frustrated that every couple years i am told that i am in love because i truly know that i am in lust, and i have a heart that cares. but i never have been able to definitively say- i'm in love.
i've never felt it before, but i'll know when i do.
yet what a terrible thing to say to someone who cares for you and wants to be cared for outside of your sexual appetite.
that you lust for her and care for her, that you would love her and make love to her, romance her and be there for her- but i am not in love, i just love her deeply, and my attraction takes years to grow.
i think i'm to re-evaluate the boundary between love and in love, whereas being in love means i would want to become a partner to another, while love and loving means i only desire to become a better partner to myself.
i believe sex is sacred, something thats only good with people you love or want to love, but i've never needed to be in love to have good sex. people want to be in love, but i daresay that i've re-evaluated what i want when i say sex is sacred to me.
sex is worship, venus, pleasure- it does not please when i don't care about you, and it isn't healthy for me when the attachment is formed only on romantic basis without the precursor of friendship, for romance is an elusive foundation without real weight or existence.
i would think anyone would work this way but apparently you are not supposed to be friends with the person you love, i am consistently told you can't be friends with the person you fall in love with. you date the person you fall in love with, you are not their friend. that you can't be physically intimate with your friends, that it is too vulnerable a place that is only held for romantic inquiry.
well i've never dated and i have no plans to, i have only ever loved freely and each relationship its own unique set.
what i've observed as 'in love' or romantic love seems wholly unappealing, and i would rather love freely or not at all.
i don't know where such a silly idea came from, i don't know why anyone would think that way- that you can't separate sex from being in love. sex is never platonic, but it doesn't have to be romantic either, even with the presence of romance, to me it is simply the highest expression of the love you feel at any moment.
i know there's levels to love that in love leads to love making with a depth and intensity that is beyond friendship.
but i think friendship is much more intense than romance.
it is the promise to attempt to conjoin your lives for years to come- an eternity if you wish.
friendship is much harsher to me than romantic love.
lovers take their leave in the morning but friends linger and sit without escape, detaching and reattaching.
i'm being told i'm in love and i hate to say that i am not.
god i wish i was.
there's different depths to love and i don't know the line i cross when i take my clothes off.
am i still your friend? you are still a friend to me although i love you deeper. my touch is the highest expression of my love and i love to express myself.
but i'm being told that touching you means i'm in love with you, and i can't help but think back to when i was 19 being told i was in love, i was in love, she's in love she's in love, when all i could remember feeling was that i liked him, i loved him, i cared, and that i wanted sex with respect, that i would not want sex if i could not love him, but i did not want to step into love with him because i did not find his romance attractive.
he loved to say i was in love because he was in love with me, and while i wanted to be in love with him, i knew he could never be the partner that i needed, and wanting him wasn't enough.
wanting you is not enough for me to fall in love.
whatever does it mean to be in love?
it means i have to want to be with you in every way- friend, foe, lover and kin.
but i'm afraid everyone i've met encompasses, one or the other, maybe two, never all.
i can't say i'm unafraid but i resent being told how i feel before i've felt it, and i cannot say i've ever been in love.
for a moment i thought i was, but not even love as special as this has made me want to step into her romance.
i'm sad for it, but i do not want your romance.
i've felt possessive and jealous, i've felt hurt and rejected, i've felt used, i've been the user, i've felt enmeshed, codependent, entangled, confused- but i can't say i've ever been in love.
there's simply the levels by which i want to touch you.
touching you deeply means i love you deeply,
yet touching is not feeling, and who can really feel me?
after some evaluation of my emotion i cannot say i am in love.
when i decided to talk to myself about how i feel more than i talk to others, because others can only understand me through their own lens where falling in love is so, the answers came quick and clear.
i love easily, i love hard, but falling in love is near impossible for me- i set a standard that is too high for anyone but myself, a boundary within myself that i refuse to fall.
i set the boundary that for me to be in love, more so than wanting flesh, i must want to know every intricacy of your mind, and you must want to know mine.
to be in love i have to feel like it's worth going there, taking you to that place where i keep only for me.
if i am to be in love the first step will be to rise in it, hand in hand, together.
it has occurred to me that no one understands that part of my personality yet, because no one has ever seen it, not even me.
while the boundaries within myself are all i thought i needed, i'm being told i have to set them with others because love and sex means something different to everyone.
what it means to me is so different from anyone i've ever met, i have never met someone with a love like mine.
can i say how much of a bother it is to me to have to consider that? what my love means to you? i don't care to, i don't ever care to explain it, to go there, to that most intimate space in my mind where only i go. so i feel a long ways from being in love.
i can say i love her more than anyone else, but never more than me.
