What John Steinbeck taught me about love in one letter
The words written by John Steinbeck to his son in a letter from 1958 appeared in my newsfeed just the day after I cut ties for the 8th, 12th, or 14th time with my on-again, off-again partner, lover, friend (depending on the season). Steinbecks words to his son explain that there is two kinds of love. “One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect.”
I was convinced I could never love or be loved as intensely as we had. The drama was fit for a movie screen. I told a friend at a bar “this is it, I can’t love more than I do now” in a terrifying admittance that I couldn’t get over him. This was no passive relationship, it was big, loud, and complicated — a sign it mattered — it was real. Until, I realized it was the crippling kind of love. The very kind Steinbeck warned about. After years of searching for answers on how to fix this relationship, with counselors, friends, family, self-help books, essays on love, and a brief stint in AA… I never stopped to realize that while our love may have real, it was so wrong. While I was focused on fixing it, blaming him, or shaming myself, I seldom stepped back to feel the brokenness. Reading that letter, our journey felt validated. We were wrapped up in the wrong kind of love.
We met as high-school lifeguards, just 16 and 18, or 17 and 19, I can’t remember. The summers morphed together. The first meaningful conversation we had was during a staff “camping” trip, code for drinking in the forest. He was an impressively fast high school swimmer, and my favorite hobby during the time was leading guys on. We dodged the puddles together walking down the mountain in the pitch black night. In the following months we ordered pizzas at work and watched bad T.V. at night. We drove around in his dads luxury car and listened to Sublime. It took us almost a year to date, only to break up a few months later when I went off to college a state away. It was only a few months until I called, lonely, after drunkenly messing up my current love interest. Another few months on, and a few off when he studied abroad. Another few months on, and off. And on, and off. Until I finally realized I wasn’t drinking for the right reasons, got sober in another state, and was able to convince him it was real this time. Less than a year later, the fact that he wasn’t sober got in the way so much we couldn’t ignore it. The last night we spent together we fought about weed. I moved his stuff out of the apartment we had shared for only two weeks without warning.
He yelled when he was annoyed, name-called when he was scared, and closed up when he was stressed. He was high too much, present too little. I was equally as unstable. I drank so much that I didn’t remember the tantrums I would throw, I would hook-up with guys to spite him, and I moved across the country more than once when things got hard. I expected actions from him I didn’t even live out myself. We were equally toxic for each other.
It all sounds terrible, to rehash our past. Until I remember the nights spent in a tent during warm summer nights at a music festival. Or sharing Christmas dinners together at his moms table. Or one of our favorite activities, wandering the aisles of the local outdoor supply store. The little moments like sipping coffee in bed or dancing at a concert still give me a pit in my stomach. Those are the moments that made it all worth it, I always reminded myself. Feeling safe, wanted, free.
I didn’t feel sad until five months later. The anger of our last moments together, ridden with resentment for the substances that pulled us apart wouldn’t let me feel anything else. Until, it all cracked and I found myself desperately, tragically, terrified that this was actually all over. We both broke the pact we had made and started texting. Soon, we found ourselves together in that very same apartment on a cold November day. We talked and cried and hugged in the kitchen. We held hands and he played with my hair. The pain I had felt for 10 months subsided, and I never wanted to leave him again.
The weeks that followed were ridden with anxiety of what was next. I wanted to be together, for good. The rubble of our past was too much for him to look over. The stability I felt with him overcame all actual proof we were not stable. I took that as love.
Which is is, but the wrong kind. John Steinbeck writes “the first kind can make you sick and small and weak.” We, in all of our self-serving, internally-focused, expectation-limiting relationship, were not focused on making the other person better. We never felt the second kind of love that “can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.” We brought each other down, focused on selfish desires, and expected a love that was for ourselves, not the other person.
I am so grateful for the twisted, overwhelming, traumatic love we shared. It shaped my view on the future, it taught me about myself, and I grew from it. Just as he did. But I am equally as grateful that Steinbeck’s wisdom to his son showed up in my digital path. Because a broken love that makes you sick, small and weak, can give way to a future love that is pure, honest, and true. And until then, peace and strength.
He says “the object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.” I am so relieved that there is a love out there that doesn’t hurt like ours did. And I will forever remember my first, grandest, most terrible, gut-wrenching love.
