Learning about Love

Just between us, I've never been in love.

You would think the years of being loveless has made me some kind of awful, spurned thing, but on the contrary, I know the most. To me, love and worthiness of love has evolved into a conceptual pursuit, and this mystical otherness has been translated to me, siphoned from the hearts of artists into literature, art and of course – music.

The first thing I ever learned about love is that it lets you down, and you don’t really realize it until very late into your twenties. You’re at a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, crying about the wrong thing when you hear a song that always reminds you of your first heartbreak. You think about him, and where he is in the world. You wonder if he’s proud of you. You hope he understands who he was to you, knowing he never thinks about it. You know it's not love, but you cry anyway. But all the loneliness in you hasn’t turned into bitterness just yet, because you know that he must be sitting alone at a bar too, listening to the same song, crying because he never made it right.

“What have I become?

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away

In the end”

The second thing I learned was that the best way to say I love you, is by not saying it. Sometimes it just manifests when you’re waiting for your train late at night, splitting an earphone as your favorite song plays. The guy you’re with doesn’t ask you who it is, or what it's called but taps the beat on your knee. Something in you swells, and as the train rushes in and out of the station you feel like throwing up, overwhelmed by this new feeling.

“And if Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied

Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks

Then I'll follow you into the dark”

The third is that there are a million types of love, and a million ways to break down and categorize it. This may sound complicated but when I look at my best friends, their faces, red and shiny from sweat, skin gleaming from the spotlights in some dark club in the city, I can only think of how important it is to find family away from family.

“Raise a glass, 'cause I'm not done sayin' it

They all wanna get rough, get away with it

Let 'em talk, 'cause we're dancing in this world alone

World alone, we're alone”

At some point the lessons stop because I may be a liar. There are loves I don't know. Maybe some I don't deserve. I’ve seen this kind reserved for other girls that fall in and out of love very easily, because it never hurts badly enough in the end. The girl next door, the sweet little things, the ones nobody wants to hurt. If she's a Madonna I would be the whore. In this way I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed.

“Oh, you kissed me just to kiss me

Not to take me home

It was simple, it was sweetness

It was good to know”

I don’t think anyone has ever said they loved me, at least not in any way that has resonated with me. It never feels right. It has always felt transactional. Because sometimes the most romantic thing someone could say to you, is what you wished someone had said to you when you were little. I remember feeling lonely before I felt loved. Hugging yourself to sleep, feeling sad in a way you can't explain, overwhelmed, wanting someone to stop and ask you how you’re feeling.

“If you're lonely, lonely, lonely; wake me

If you're lonely, lonely, lonely; wake me

If you're lonely, lonely, lonely; wake me

If you're lonely, lonely, lonely; wake me”

I slept in the same bed as my mother and sister growing up, and most nights I would face the wall and cry myself to sleep and I never knew why or where this feeling was coming from but it would come in waves past midnight and although it was a strange little secret I always wished someone had found out. Peeled the blanket off my wet face and asked me what was wrong. But no one ever did. Even now as an adult, with my back pushed against some guy’s chest I still let the tears fall onto his arm and drip onto the pillowcase. He never wakes up, and I still have my secret.