love is awful
love is awful.
it’s awful. it’s painful. it’s frightening. it makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. it makes you selfish. it makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. it’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there.
so no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own.
so. love. the most beautiful and terrifying thing we have to hold onto (and we do have to hold on to it).
it melts you from the inside. it grips your lungs and gently rubs its thumb back and forth. it places its soft, innocent hand in your mouth to see if you'll bite. it asks you to place your being in the hands of another, and won't wait for you to tell it if you're ready or not. it just happens.
i've had my heart torn apart quite a few times now. i've recently taken to saying, to sum up my approach to love in a cute, digestible phrase: "i can accept having my heart ripped open again. it means someone, with those same two hands, held it with care."
there are few things i desire more than to be loved. yeah, no shit, i know. who doesn't. i'm a human being. but i think i often forget quite how much i crave it until it, or specifically a new girl, digs her way into my heart. suddenly i'm reminded that nothing matters more than making her happy, no matter what happens to me. it's a lot. it's not the healthiest.
i want to be known. to be understood. to be heard. to be held. to have the minutiae of my habits remembered. to have my fingers found under the duvet and locked sleepily in her own. to rest my head and have nothing in it but the consideration of how to most comfortably lay it on her chest. to look into her eyes and see myself reflected. seen.
the intensity of all of this is what terrifies me. i am, for better or worse (i lean towards worse!), incapable of loving in small amounts. i want to be engulfed. the fear arises as soon as i realise that i am harboring these feelings. that i will engulf them, in turn. that i will terrify them as much as i do myself. that the blinding nature of this fire in me will make them turn heel and run.
i was told that i am too much once, a few years ago. i internalised it. i have never gotten over it. i fear i will forever be too much.
i will continue to love. i will continue to give my heart. i will continue to let it be held. i will continue to watch it be ripped open, if it comes to that.
i will continue to love. i'll try to be better about it. i'll try not to be torn apart.