the road to love and back
After numerous nights of barely being able to sleep; of tossing and turning, phone peering, netflix watching, and smoking stupid cigs, I realize I am experiencing something like the sensation of falling in love. Old me would try to play it cool (which means acting insane), but new me is open to this event, scary as it is. I know I only met this new person just twice in my life, but I’m struck. And by struck, I mean my hormones are raging at the 24 hour club called Sam’s Body; they’re staying up all night, snorting things in the bathroom, finding their way in and out of K-holes between dj sets.
I know we just met. I know we don’t fully know one another. We haven’t even had sex. It is not him I am in love with per se, not yet—maybe soon, maybe never. When I say I am experiencing the sensation of falling in love, what I mean is that I’ve had a reservoir within, green with love, sizing 16 Texas’s, and this person has located in my body precisely where it is. Of course it was always there, they did not put it there, they’re just showing me a new path to it—a playful one of openness and too-compatible tongue kissing, and they’re inviting me in for a skinny dip. There isn’t brush to cut down nor are there old footsteps to follow, he’s taking me to the furthest reaches of my own shores as if I’d never met them. I feel unhinged. I feel alive. I feel love.
On one of my sleepless nights, I scour the internet for relief. In an odd twist of fate I just so happen to find some—a most unusual occurrence when using google as guru. I find an article that talks about the “crazy” falling in love feeling, and how it has a lot to do with [said] hormones (or emotions) flooding my brain. “I mean that at the beginning of a relationship, people often lose touch with reality. They have a hard time distinguishing between fact and fiction. They invent stories in their head and convince themselves that they’re true. Good judgment and patience fly out the window." I remember my neuroscience professor exclaiming: “Hormones are the real ones calling the shots. We are just dumb hormonal animals, etc.” (I miss that guy.) I believe it, that my hormones are the likely cause of all this lovers angst. What I don’t want to imply here is that the science of my hormones somehow suggests this experience as less magic—less real; attractions point to innermost desires—they aren’t meaningless. However, I am encouraged now to apply a specific, early onset discernment during these prickly, spicy times. As quoted above, the mind will make up stories and believe them at all costs. It’s a confusing sensation for the mindbody, it’s on fire and it wants the security of cooling water (answers/security) ASAP.
“Love is slow” Lordcowboy says. (I know I speak of her all the time, there is so much resonance between us).
I read these words as a guided prayer. For me, to be discerning is to go as slow as possible right now, which is the pace we happen to be moving at. Little snails we are. Lying in parks kissing and talking, then going our own ways. There are sometimes days between texts, but there is also (now) a lessening fear around sending one if it feels like I ought to. Still, the anticipation of hoping to see his name on my phone notifications pulses throughout the day, and there is such sweet relief when I do. Could it be, that instead of following instructions from the hormones—acting frenzied and rushed, I can actually seek other inner council—the one I’ve been fostering with years of healing—and respond instead with slow? I think so. I’m not saying I have any control over it, ya know, there being a giant reservoir of love in me that certain special humans so willingly cup their hands into and let me drink from. But I can sip slowly, I can make motions of wading—flirting with my own waters, instead of diving head first.
The end of the article sums it up like this: “So rather than rushing to assumptions and impulsively reacting to those assumptions, try and ask yourself to build up a muscle for ‘I don’t know.’ Sit with it, try not to be overwhelmed by panic, and try to remember: You’ll be fine no matter what.” While this offered me no 1,2,3 steps to figure out if he’s into me, or what I can do to make him be, it gives me the resolve I sought. All the what if’s are just playing their part in the game of unfolding. I am, just as I suspected, resting uncomfortably in the hammock of the unknown. The air is at just the right chill to send shivers and the blanket is perfectly too light to provide the warmth I crave. I can’t get cozy. I can’t get snug with these feelings, they are too much, too many, too fast. And that’s just as well, I can allow them their room to be too much. Soon they will subside anyhow, may as well enjoy the dizziness.
Building up the muscle of I don’t know also seems to me like the correct practice for anything that applies to existence. Building a muscle of I don’t know requires an expanding stillness; a fattening council of slow.
Moving forward, the slow council states:
The world opens up and the mind finds ease when nothing “should” happen.
Actions can be deliberate, even if they haven’t in the past.
Communication can have space, even if it seems on the surface like avoidance.
No need to make flying leaps of meaning where there isn’t any, or isn’t any yet.
Opening yourself to pleasure means you will open yourself equally to pain. Getting hurt when opening to love is inevitable—add it to your list of things to do, take deeper breaths when it comes.
Go ahead and keep snailing alongside this human, hope for a lot—no need to deny our wishes. But keep in mind it’s gonna end up how it does, and we’ll be okay whatever that does is, even if it knocks the wind out of ya.
Keep slow and steady to the moonstar of love, podner.
This would be the perfect interlude to The Art of Slooowing essay I’ve been rambling on about, which I haven’t worked on much due to all the anxiety of could this be love? What a world we live in, where someone can come out of nowhere and do such a thing—make you feel your own love, just by being themselves. It’s happened to me before, but this time is different. I step foot once more on the merry-go-round of human meets human, knowing this time it’s not just about them, it’s just as much about me—my wants, needs, desires; knowing there are no guarantees—feelings aren’t promises; knowing this time that the love never leaves, certainly not when they leave. It feels like the love leaves when they leave, maybe they take their particular path with them, but there is always a way back to my own wellspring. Love can arise like the strike of a match, and sometimes I must walk the length of the savannah, starved and thirsting, to return to it; both (all) are acceptable paths. If that is the message I’m left with, that and that alone, when all is said and (hopefully not) done—then that will have been enough.
ON MY MIND:
Do me a favor will you? Just be yourself, as complicated as that is. Your whole weird self if ya can help it. I’m talking a Jim Carrey score on the Andy Kaufman scale. Try it out, even if there’s a bat tattooed between your boobs that you’re pretty sure you’re getting removed, and you’re losing sleep over a damn near stranger, and you feel like a teenage boy awaking from a wet dream. Just stay with yourself anyway. Do that for me, won’t you?
Ask often: “How does it make me feel?” and be very honest, if with no one else, at least yourself. Maybe this song will help…