Limerence, Limoncello, and Other Tasty Things

Limerence. If you do not have the slightest hint of what this word means, then let me speak it. It's a drug, one not to be taken more than once or else you'll end up as miserable as a crone. Addictive substance that it is, no one can truly define how it starts and how it ends, at least to me. It slams you on the face, making you savor the air like the prized heirloom recipe passed down to you, eventually leaving you as quick as it met you.

Limerence is such a big word for a young adult trying to grope around the realities of the world. Limerence, limoncello, whatever. It sounds tasty as it poses sexily on your ear, gnawing and poking holes as to whether you've had it already or not. Like a disease, it starts small and spreads throughout your body, electrifying every passing moment and sews you into a labyrinth that goes round and round.

Searching on the Internet tells you this big, tasty word means longing, yearning, the chase, a lust for touch, compulsion to obsess towards another. The sudden and sparkly fantasy with rainbow bubbles adorning it, turning simple gestures into euphoria. The roller coaster of emotions, the ride of a lifetime, all hanging by a thread that snaps sooner or later, hitting you on the eye. Euphoria becomes despair, fumbling around threads to knot and images soon to burn.

I once saw it clear as day, when a friend became so affectionate towards a person she wasn't even dating. It was mere infatuation and infatuation on the possibility of what they might become. A desire to please and be pleased in more ways than one, driven by carnal pursuits and yearning for continuity of a relationship that wasn't even there.

She was grief stricken from a falling out with a partner, and in denial at that, when she became limerent. It all happened at once, telling me bejeweled tales of newfound intimacy, coaxing each passing word as a sure thought. And as sure as the sun emerging from the horizon every morning, all bits and pieces fall into place like jigsaw puzzle pieces that have been washed by the tides separately, ultimately finding one another like the stars aligning as constellations in the dead of night.

I saw it all, and although the tales were tasty as cherry pie, it felt acrid in my mouth like inhaling the stench of urine from a nearby dark alley. Her words spoke volumes of how great the two of them together are, and I, for the love of me, could never, ever believe an ounce of it. She spun words around, as intricate as a spider's silk web and a tiny snowflake slowly falling down your lover's inviting mouth. It is a work of art — limerence, truly magnetic. But even majestic arts have their dark and wet origin story. A demise fitting for a quick hither and thither of a man's fencing stick into the depths of a woman's deepest desire.

One tell-tale sign of limerence is the intriguing mix of the shortest time spent with a person and the tantalizing amount of stories you have already orchestrated in your wishful mind. Hopping like a rabbit from the painful falling out with a promised partner to a new lover with a devilish mouth. Love is energy, and energy is neither created nor destroyed, or so the physics professor told me. The quiet and dull warmth of an ebbing relationship transformed into sweet nothings with ornate frivolousness in the blink of an eye. That is no love, no. That is limerence.

But how could one resist the devil? With his playful mouth that kisses each crevice of your body and his smirking, wanton eyes gazing over your skin — truly a delicious fleeting moment. Each planted kiss wet and hungry, leaving traces of saliva mixed with intentions of utmost animalistic desire.

There is no love in that. Love is born from the naked truths and vulnerability you shared in confidence, not in naked bodies and steamy bedrooms rented for one single night to re-enact one of the seven deadly sins like a pair of stray animals in estrus. As filthy as it sounds, limerence is just a dark and wet alley painted in pinks and dusted in gold, luring anyone vulnerable enough and yearning for love, only to find a lover's touch hot as sand. The sizzle is profound, electrifying and waking up your innermost sensuality with a lascivious wink. It's new and addicting, now that you feel like your body is finally recognized, satiating its hideous hunger.

Limerence, limoncello, whatever. Both things so sweet and intense and born from skin to skin. A strong, zesty attraction that softens your senses, no matter how dull they are, making you feel alive as if your very being is tempted to burst from every pore. As tasty as it is, limerence or limoncello lacks the body, the soul, the entirety of something deeper than superficial as skin. Far from love, limerence is only an incomplete cadence of strings of fluttery emotions laced with sweat and rhythmic pulses, all seemingly skin-deep and vapid.