Just A Four Letter Word

To fall in love is to do just that- lose all footing and have no concept of what it is to touch the ground.

You literally fall face first into a pit of infatuation and disregard all rationality. For the first time in history your heart uses its muscle mass to over power your brain with a full on intent on running the entire show. For anyone who instinctively follows the voice of reason, love almost feels like a mistake before it has even begun. Like a romantic comedy, the idea of love starts off full of fun and promise and somewhere down the line starts to look more like a thriller. You find yourself turning into one of those people watching a horror movie saying things like “don’t look in the closet it’s a trap” but you know damn well that the fool on screen will do it anyways even though all the signs are there warning them against it. In this pivotal moment you turn and say to your friends, “I would never have done that. They must have seen it coming!”

Well, to be in love is to be that helpless spectator and at the same time the person who doesn’t see it coming.

I have to say, falling in love is not something I have ever truly done in all forms; however, I am still crazy enough to want to experience it. I can say that I have given away pieces of my heart two times, once when I was actively using drugs (so it is safe to say there was nothing real about that very altered experience), and secondly and much more recently, I experienced a love I felt to be genuine (yet still not conventional in any sense of the word). But does the fact that it was not cookie cutter mean it wasn’t legitimate? Hasn’t my entire life been built off of the disregard for conformity of all kinds? So, I count it. I do so because I still feel as though I do not have ownership of my heart. I feel like my heart has been sold, leased out, mailed in a parcel to another country with no return address… I have not left with all pieces of myself intact.

Love is messy, and although I strive off of chaos naturally it is not the kind of chaos I understand or know how to navigate. This love is a storm that has blindsided me and ripped away my anchor and has left me floating and uncertain of my next destination. Is this what love feels like for everyone? I cannot be the only one that has been left absolutely terrified and only two steps away from a straight jacket and padded wagon.

I am genuine person and so I fit that cliche statement- “she wears her heart on her sleeve.” At first, I wore my heart there so I would always know where to find it. But with life experience comes new perspectives, and so, maybe to wear your heart on your sleeve means you have the ability to choose when you wear it and when you take it off. Maybe, love is just a raw fashion statement. I have seen many people try it on and discard it like a garment that wasn’t quite right for the occasion. My experience of love left me feeling every fiber of that garment, and I still cannot wrap my mind around how so many people can just try it on for a time and be done with it. Maybe, what they meant when they said I wore my heart on my sleeve... they were really just talking about a tattoo I had permanently ingrained into my skin.

Once I experienced the intensity of what it was to love someone, I learned what it is was like to fear losing them. I knew then that I had to try and get out alive before I lost all ability to do so… before I gave away all the pieces of myself that held me together. But to love genuinely is to gift those pieces to someone else because to love is to invest. The physical discomfort of pain is not something new to me, but the emotional pain that comes with feeling both love and loss for another person, nothing in this life prepared me for that.

Having this be such a new and foreign experience, I tried to quit you the only way I knew how- like a pack of cigarettes. First, I just tried gradually cutting back and indulging less, and then I tried avoiding any associations that might trigger the you living in me. I tried to listen to my favorite music, but it no longer offered me the comforts it had in the past and instead just left me with knots in my stomach and a craving for you all over again. But just like smoking, the habit of loving you is so deeply ingrained that I can’t stop myself from picking the pack up again and going with that familiar habit. I guess I was just not ready to give it all up.

They say you know when you are ready to quit a substance, well what if that means never for some? Love is fickle. Love is irrational. Love is loss.

Love, makes me an emotional idiot.

This four-letter word has changed me, and it has made me realize that once you get a taste of it you will always be stupid enough to reach for it again- no matter the consequences.