Space and time are linked as a fabric. There is no space wothout time; there is no time without space - even as a gift. There is no giving space without giving it some time; there is no giving time without giving space.
I need to give both. I thought it was me who needed this gift, so I asked others for it. It's a gift I needed to give myself. Sorting through emails I realize that I have been in perpetual romantic sadness for 6 years now. I have not grown. I did then what I do now. I send corrective emails, though not as long. I get angry at anything that makes me feel like a commodity for her happiness, though not as angry. I get lonely and dependent on the next thing, without knowing anymore what that is.
I want none of you, I want all of you. I want you all to pamper me, even though I am not a victim. I want you all to leave me alone, even though you're the only people who tell me you love me. If I die tomorrow, or anytime really so long as I don't get alzheimers, I'll look back on this time and remember that I pushed away everyone who told me they loved me. Today I can justify: Not right timing, not enough love, too much, doesn't feel right, I'm smothering her, she's manipulating me, and so on. But sometime tomorrow when this has finally become a memory and not my reality, there will be no refuge. I will have lost touch with those who love me. I asked them to look at me through the glass. The ones who I loved first I want a glass between us so they can one day see me happy and know that it wasn't because of them. The ones who loved me first I want a glass between us so I don't hurt them with my experiments.
The truth is I'm still experimenting, still not sure if I really know what love is. I used to think of love as something that you just want to feel. Now love seems.like something I should feel. I should feel it when I spend years chasing her, I should feel it when she tells me she feels it, I should feel it when we're together, I should stop feeling it when we're not. Or maybe I should keep feeling it if it really is love 'cause if I don't then it mever really was. So love can change her appearance, hop in and out of my reality, maybe even leave me for years. I shouldn't force love, it should just happen, they say when I'm trying for it. Love doesn't just happen, you've got to fight for it, they say when I let it pass. I'm never right about love.
I am not a victim of love, none of us are. Love isn't punishment even when it feels like it. I'm not a true non-believer of love, I want with my every fibre to wake up one day and without even having to roll over, to say I'm in love. That has not been the case, for years. I've woken up wondering, Is this love? I've woken up and rolled over to ask, Am I in love or is this just an illusion? I've woken up wondering, will this feel like love? Will she love me more or less? Will I, so that this feels even? Is love even? Or is there a reason why it always feels odd?
I have all these questions for love and yet I have no questions for unicorns. They might both be the same fable: the mystical entity that women yearn for from the earliest age that also congures good from the hearts of man when he is brave enough to ride. But maybe women grow up to realize it's not really true, and that love is just a device that can be used to conjure favours, guilt, obligation and security. What else is love good for, among you women? When else do you offer up your precious four letters but to secure these promises? Maybe men grow up to find out that love is a unicorn without a saddle, a painful experience to ride, and grabbing it by the horn is a mistake because once you do it disappears. But I've forgotten, all men are dogs and women have the short end of the stick when it comes to wielding love. I forget that I have hurt every woman who has loved me, and I do not feel pain. I forget that no woman has ever been attracted to my vulnerability or feared my strength. I forget that love is a choice a woman allows herself to make and a promise a man should uphold. I forget what every woman in the last 6 years has pointed out to me, I don't know what real love is.
They're right. Hands to the sky I have no clue. For the ladt 6 years I've been searching for somehing I don't even recognize. In fact I've done it again. I do it all the time. Somebody loves me and I love that somebody but I can't make it work. I can't let it work. I realize now that I don't want it to work. I never wanted love to work.
Each time when things felt complicated I ended it. There is no fight for love because I don't believe in it enough to shed blood. Nobody can promise me that love is a place where I can settle.
Love has not felt like a destination, it has felt like a voyage, one that I'm still on. Every now and then I find a port, and I ask out loud if this is where love is. They tell me yes, and so I stay a bit, until either they tell me know.or I find out for myself. I've been stopping at so many ports that I don't even know where I'm sailing to anymore.
Love is not a voyage, this isn't an exercise in poetry. It is a destination. You arrive there and everything is perfect. You feel perfect when you are there because that place is perfect for you. There are no winds, you can let down the masts. There are no waves, you need not anchor. Every direction is the right one, you need not steer. I have not arrived there, I have just wanted to.
Hearts are broken, either theirs or mine. I never leave without a fight though, so I will break their hearts regardless. There isn't a woman alive who has said 'I love you' to me who doesn't now feel that her life is better without me. And when they allow themselves to want more from me, to remember those smiles we shared, I remind them of our frowns.
I piece them all together because they are all the same. They all dared to love a man who is more obsessed with love than them. I don't believe in them any more than I believe in love. I don't believe them because what they want is what they want. They wanted it before they met me. They wanted it when they met me. They say it's me that they want, and that's when I stop believing. They've never met anyone like me, they don't know what they're talking about, and so on. How could they love me when I'm not even done getting better. They want my jokes, my attention, my kindness, my caring - but they don't believe in this quest that I'm on. They have no doubt that I'll get there, they doubt even less than I do in my success, but it is not where they want to go. They don't want to follow me there to those dark corners, they just want me to take them somewhere, away from here. Thanks for the lift, they shout back. So I am weary, weary when they are aboard my ship. For how long will you stay? Where are you steering? This is not where we ought to go. Shipwreck.
This is all very convoluted, as it should be trying to explain 5 failed relationships with 1 analogy. This will only incite anger and resentment, because nobody wants to be made into an anecdote, no less a grouped one. But resentment is like debt; eventuslly you incur so much of it that you don't even know the difference anymore. I know for damn sure I can't make anyone else happy, neither when I try or give up. I'm not a victim of love or women, I'm the bad guy, remember? I'm the guy who has only questions and no answers about love, about anything. I don't know what love is, all I know is I'm going to make a bunch of attempts at answering what it is before I look for it again. I don't know if the answer is in my head, but it's a safer place to ask.
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