How To Love

Kill any notion that she is the one, that she will complete you, that you need her. Kill the assumption that you love her and you will begin, from scratch, to learn to love her. She is not the air you breathe and she is not your other half because you are never anything less than whole. Kill any cliché that she sighs on your lips and demand the truth instead. Demand authenticity and listen if she gives it to you. Do not be fooled by her lipstick, for she plays upon you like a pipe. Do not be fooled by her bookshelves and think that you know her; they may only be the self she presents to you, a performance. You cannot reach her yet.

But also kill the idea that she needs you. Kill the idea that she is something to contain, limit, categorize, and classify. Kill the idea that you can pin her down and that she is anything less than whole. Kill your fantasy of her, your appropriation of her: kill the lipstick—she doesn’t wear it for you—and kill the bookshelves you use to define her. Kill your idea of her so she can claim it for herself.

Kill your longing to know her beyond what she is prepared to give you. Kill your idea of love as a cure-all.

Instead, give birth to a new kind of love and a new kind of heart. People think they need to break their hearts to reveal their secrets, to show who they really are, to have any hope of being honest. But for us, the reticent, the reserved, the withdrawn, the introverted, the inhibited, and the shy, being honest can feel like our hearts are being inverted, sliced open and folded in on themselves, exposed to the world.

But there is another way to be honest besides shattering our hearts, a more subtle way, a more passive way, a more transparent way. Give birth to a heart that is smarter, more adaptable, like one that pushes its secrets through its arteries, up and up until they bleed out of you.

Give birth to a love that is realistic, that is ethical, that is passionate and honest. Give birth to a love that advocates for independence, for freedom. Kill the way you are told to love and give birth to the way you will love.