I made another excuse today.
An attempt to justify a habit of loving recklessly, quickly, and frequently; yet almost always temporary.
I bitterly listen to the world as it passes. All those curated life experiences, overused advices, and dictions eloquently put together. Those are noise, a star lounging through space–in itself a massive ball of glowing fire carved from the beginning of time, but in the grander scheme of things, just one amongst billions. I nevertheless still listen, exercising the muscle of open-mindedness others are so gifted to have as a reflex. I paid close attention to what people said: how love is meant to be grand, but careful. Delicate, but strong. Comfortable, but loosely apathetic. These tangles of rules that were meant to be unspoken seem to be strangely abundant. But when people were asked the next day to explain love, they shrug their shoulders as if lack of willingness to put love in boxes of dictions–words to define or phrases to understand.
My untrained senses, my young brain, struggled to keep up.
I never knew what a healthy relationship feels like. See, I know how it might look like, but the very lack of it in my own life makes it seems like it’s rather unattainable. Like a good book on a shelf too high to reach. This notion of boundaries and transparency felt oddly alien in me that I mistake “healthy relationships” as being unloved, uncared for, and a show of disinterest.
I long for relationships that I unapologetically built in my head. The necessary guilt, a dragging banter, the annoying childish jealousy, and the tug-of-war of arguments that aren’t constructive yet far from spastic. A raw, unprejudiced connection that isn’t always stained with bad memories or experiences that did nothing but built walls around our hearts. Connections that are as intense as a deep sea trench on a Monday, then as sweet as animal warmth professing as a family on a Thursday night, but as uneasy as a hot summer Saturday when I don’t want your sweaty fingertips anywhere near my personal space of a mile. A today that feels frustrating, a tomorrow that doesn’t promise good feelings, but a day after that might. I’d like to feel without constantly carrying an anchor, a love so innocent and so unguarded that everyday feels like a fucking risk. It fluctuates, it’s unreasonable, yet it’s strangely familiar.
I didn’t have exemplary guidelines for love. I fell in love quick and dirty. A good smile prompts the heart. Followed by the right amount of laugh from the right type of humour. It stays long during troubled conversations that either of us are able to hold–like holding a bucket full of water with two fingers. Risky, heavy, and essentially not that important. But we enjoyed it anyway because we don’t mind the inevitable outcome that we’re just going to be humorously soaking wet in our own little world. I fell in love with someone that sings off key, then one that I mistaken for Bruce Springsteen. Someone who talks shit about others in an elegant fashion, then he who is wise but yet to have the skill to voice his thoughts. It’s a strange realisation, really. An ability I never remember asking but one I was gifted anyway has brought me so far I learned to love my heart more than whoever he loves.
This love is mine–how I choose to show it and the extent to which I disclose it. But I never felt guarded. My heart undresses himself every morning and he chooses not to listen to me. He does what he does and I have grown to let him be, making snap judgments on who and when to love–utterly carefree.
He’s arguably and intoxicatingly shortsighted, but I like him like this.
