Loving Love

A very strange thing happened to me tonight. I say 'strange' because I'm not really sure how else to describe it. The four horsemen of the apocalypse could come steaming their way through humanity, barreling into townships and houses mercilessly cutting down any, and every, thing in their path and ask me to describe what happened tonight in any word other than 'strange' in order to save myself from their despotic rampage and invariably, 'strange' would be the best I could come up with.

I ran into somebody. Somebody that haunts me in a way that I don't understand. I used to be angry about it, this occupation this person had in my brain and heart, and after tonight, I don't know what to feel. Anger started giving way to recovery recently and confusion and resolution now seem intertwined, swirling  drunkenly forever. What do I do?

I didn't yell or fight or get defensive and it was cold out, the air shaking me. When our eyes connected I saw question marks, mocking my previously indignant resolve. What was I thinking at this very moment, I can't quite recall. All i know is I was unsure of myself and I felt weak. Needless to say, I didn't take kindly to this and I broke our line of vision. I started talking about my writing and about my daughter to combat my wavering sense of self and the world around us became stiff and dangerous. Silence. Then I felt better. I had regained control over the situation, we smiled and talked a bit more about this and that and dogs and movies. Then we hugged.

My sense of smell has always been keen, the strength closer to my Mom's supernatural smell than my Dad's muffled olfactory ability, and well below my brother's godly powers. The hug triggered something and we stayed like that for minutes, maybe. We both smelled familiarity and distance and apologies and pain and something else: Love.

I've been in love with two women in my short time on this earth and I'm sure I will love again as many times, but I'll never really understand why. My friends have noted that I fall quickly for girls and I can't deny it, but the question always becomes 'what is it that makes me love'. I loved this person to a point where I was willing to risk things that were well beyond my power or right to risk. Any sane person would say it's understandable I ended up broken because of this love. I always come back to the thought that maybe....maybe I love love. Maybe I've become such a cliche, such a monster of romantic sentiment that I genuinely ache for the idea of love. Romantic comedies always pull me in even though I always, always, know how they will end and unrequited love is actually admirable in my book. What a loon I am.

This, of course, does not invalidate the times I have been in love. One of the rude and inane things people say is that 'you don't know what love is until you've been in love'. People are rude and inane, in general, but I don't know if the former is true. What I do know is that if you have been in love, you know. I guess by talking about loving love, I think I want to propose that maybe I look for it before it's there or after it has gone.

The love I had with the person I encountered tonight is gone, but god damn it if there wasn't a tiny bit of me that wanted that to be false tonight. I miss being in love and I'm not ashamed to say it, but I am proud of myself for not giving into the warm, begging hands of a former life. So I guess that's one small step for me.

Isn't that nice.