love.

to break from poetry for just a moment -

Today, it is sunny. I'm exhausted; my body aches, my heart is dragging. But I still believe in love. I believe in it, because I've seen it in action, among and between my friends, my family. It takes work, it isn't easy. It's a strange combination of head and heart, uplifting and exchanging, listening and speaking, valuing and acting.

Lifetime partners do not operate according to deadlines. Lifetime partners can lie in your arms quietly, or can pour out their dreams, and can sketch out a lifetime together with you. They can tell jokes, philosophize, be an idiot, be brilliant. They are courageous, because they trust themselves to question or challenge their beloved -- just as the best of friends gently push us to be our best, a true lover is proactive. They dance, sing, and make love to the person they have chosen to honor with their full presence, the commitment of being themselves as openly and honestly as possible - honesty and awareness breed loving energy. This kind of love recognizes that life is nothing but brief moment, both a collection of memories and the nether of future - that in between the two, it is best to gently treasure the beloved's hand. Some of those moments will be bad - bad days, weeks, months or minutes - but we get through them so that we can treasure the wonderful, incredible, amazing, ridiculous and beautiful moments, too. Soul mates can make mistakes.

Lots of people have this kind of love, but many more do not. Looking at the world in 2010, I see that so many people my age confuse love with drama, sex, or even torture - many people live their whole lives thinking that love is tied to some grotesquely beautiful need to suffer, or that enduring suffering makes them a better person - a Christ complex in the bedroom. We only think we need Romantic ideals, but they only mislead us to believe that the ideal once existed, has vanished, but may be retrieved through a mystical, magical moment of grace. Even aetheists seek a personal Paradise Lost.

I've never seen that version, that fake love, work out. I've seen it be convincing enough for people to marry and stay married; I've seen it justify the most terrible ways people can treat each other. I've seen it in movies and plays; I've heard it in songs, but its reality cancer. One partner's ideals are crushed - they punish their partner. They try to 'fix' their partner - the poison spreads. An utterly internal belief system lashes out and hurts the people we claim to love; we dessicate ourselves. Unless we become aware of ourselves, our habits, and the power of unexamined expectations - we carry them with us as a burden, a time-bomb, and repeat them all again with someone new.

He's the first one I couldn't fool. I really can't blame him for not falling in love with a series of defenses. I knew it as the weeks went on; I was scared and slipped them on - the Perfect Girlfriend, the Happy Woman, the Cheerful Partner. Maybe I don't love myself throughly yet; at least, not all the time. I have a collected lifetime of joy, travel, family, friends, learning, and beauty - but nothing is worse than allowing someone see to that its also riddled with imperfections, humiliations, disappointments, depression. I even occasionally fart. Better to keep myself special by virtue of being alone - the incomprehensible artist... it always seemed like a safe role to play in a postmodern world. I'm an equally misguided Romantic.

He can't fix me. I can't fix him. But: is there someone who can 'fix' us at all? Is there really someone out there for whom all my neuroses will suddenly heal over --someone who I'll just subconsciously "let in" and forever end the act of second-guessing myself? He seems to think so, but I think he's wrong. I think that's too convenient, and misses the point of what genuine love is. Love takes energy, but it creates it, too. It dies when the energy consists of nothing but bodies, because sex without intimacy is just a series of motions.

Intimacy is built on the words we exchange, the moments that take quality time to build, the events we share together and the hopes we have for ourselves and for each other... isn't it? A lack of words - or an overabundance of the accidentally dishonest variety - provide no fuel needed for the heart to properly burn. Therefore, is he right to believe that love needs no words - no work? I can't accept that.

Which means maybe I'm better off, being let go. He didn't fall for my act, but he also never gave me a fair shot - his worldview doesn't seem to allow for me, or anyone else, to live up to his expectations, anyway. It aches today. I was beginning to know him, and I have always admired, respected and adored him. Yet there was something lurking in the background, and I couldn't name it before last week - ironically, it has been the End that best illustrated his character, his values, his actions. He's a good person who was reckless with both his heart and mine - but I'm nonetheless honored that he did. I'm a good person who needs to voice her legitimate needs, project her beautiful voice. I let myself down, but it was the best I could be, and I'll be a stronger person for it in the end - a mis-step in the right direction, I have to believe. I'll be ready, one day, to be someone's lifetime partner. Somewhere out in the world, someone is preparing himself.