I Could Love Anyone Forever, for a Month...

I was having coffee yesterday with a friend who shares relational issues.  They are not the exact same issues, but she too struggles with intimacy and loving.  She better at the whole longevity thing than me, to her own detriment.

As we were discussing life and dating and sex and men and all of that, I said the above sentence...”I could love anyone forever for a month...”  And then we both laughed.  Hard.  Because it is so me and so true.  If I can see the end in sight, I can love you with wild, passionate abandon.  But if there is no set expiration date on our love, well, then, that changes things a bit...

She laughed because she could relate to the impermanency of longing and love and all that goes with it.  She laughed because she could see the truth in my statement.  She laughed because she could see that all of us, to some greater or lesser degree, are able to love intensely for short bursts, but it is spreading that love out and over time that makes love and loving and, in turn, living so much harder.

I used to believe there were people who were “good” at loving.  And then there are those of us who are “bad” at loving.  But I don’t believe that anymore.  I am not “bad” at loving.  I love well, often.  Often people whom I should not engage with, or love, or date or whatever, but it isn’t the love that I give that is the problem...it is what my loving another does to me that is problematic.  And for me, and for her, it is in the choice we make on who to date that causes the trajectory of loving encounters to become something else entirely.

For me, as I am older and far more jaded, I am embracing this “love anyone forever for a month” idea.  I mean I am good at the short term, and I am happiest in unions that I can see the ending in the beginning.  My issues with love and commitment always come when we play them out out over time.  It is the love stretched thinner over the span of decades and years that cause my abilities and endurance to wear bare.  But in the heat of the moment, the intensity of the beginning, I am fucking amazing.  Endless possibilities and a depth of love and commitment that rivals anyone’s ability.

I have have come to know that I am a hot flame, burning intensely but my conflagration shall be shorter lived than what lifetimes require.

And I am doing the work to be ok with this, because at this point, I am really not sure I can do it differently, or that I even want to.

I like the new.  

I like the intensity of exploration.

I like the thrill of the chase and the capture.

I like the endless possibilities of one you don’t know so well.

I tend to wilt in the depths and prefer to swim more solitary in the those kinds of waters.

But over closer to shore where land is easily accessible, where I am able to extricate myself without the need of others, I tend to do better.

I can spend the rest of my life bemoaning this fact about me or I can just accept it and move on.  I have spent so much of my life trying to have what I see other people have or do what they do, and finally, blessedly, I am just done with all of that.  I love intensely forever for a month.  This is who I am. I will continue to do my inner work, and perhaps that will change, but I am kind of done with pathologizing myself into believing that just because I do not fit the norm, that I am inherently flawed, wrong or off track.  

There are lots of people that love forever.

There are lots of people who don’t love at all.

And there are quite a few people who are completely deluded about how they love and who they love and what love is there to teach them.

I think the greatest love I have been given in this life is the one I have worked so hard to develop with myself...I love me today, not because I am so fabulous but often because I am so not.  I am flawed, fucked up, insecure, emotional and a person doing her best to own that every single day.  Not to dress it all up like I have it all together or figured out.  I don’t need your approval and I don’t need to learn to love like you think I should either.  Perhaps I am just one of those people who will love you a lifetime in one month and you will be the better for it..and so will I.  And perhaps, if I keep working on myself this will change me over time.  Regardless, I am going to do my best to love me for who I am today, even the flawed, damaged, broken and sharp parts of me that I spent so much of my life hating.

I think the largest and best triumph of my life is that I am no longer one of those people who I can love herself forever, but only for a month.  I am finally a life time inhabitant of my own soul, my own life and my own story...

And that feels like progress, regardless of what you might call it.

Again, still...