[369] No I Love You More

How many times have I said “I don't believe in love?” I want to explain further why, and what it would look and sound like if I did.

I like stories. It helps if the characters are compelling or there is an honesty to the infinite nuance that's spoken to. I love stories. They allow you to live as many lives as you have the time to empathize with. Maybe you can't be a superhero. Maybe we're not quite to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Maybe you'll never face the impossible circumstances of characters you hold most dear. But you get a chance to explore. You get to ask yourself questions and test your ideas. You get to reflect and grow right along with something that's sharing your head space.

I first stopped believing in love when it seemed unfairly difficult to maintain. Maybe too many relationships where one person loves, the other person likes, but dammed if they don't share the language. It becomes a balancing act. One leveraging their version of love against the other's. If you could either keep up your end of the “bargain” or keep your other in the dark long enough, you got to hold onto it until something worth the dramatic episode to follow was introduced to the situation. I would ask, why does love seem so much like a hostage crisis?

I, also first, stopped believing in love because of the infinite amount of things that were justified in its name. Do you know why you're willing to play the game depicted above? Because you love them. Maybe it's your god doing all sorts of contradictory and crazy shit because of love. Maybe insecure is simply too long of a word, so you simply love the idea that the person you hold most dear can't talk to or spend time with people under which you feel threatened. And dammit! You love them so much back that you're willing to sever ties and redefine your life indefinitely.

The further you investigate the word, the further you spiral into the abyss. For some people it means “absolute faith” in that you don't even eye fuck the girl you walk past on the street without some severe consequences. For some, it's this playful notion of togetherness. As long as they mostly inhabit your space most of the time, why, you couldn't think of a more loving gesture. It's like calling every color green. The most intense and painful experience or the lightest self-assured expression between any two things all become some expression of love.

And in its convoluted all-encompassing descriptions is where people find their deepest clarity! Of course it's all the pain you feel. Of course it's moments of doubt. Of course it's weathering the storm of two personalities trying to resolve around a common center. Of course it's the rush of emotions that keep you paralyzed yet invigorated. Of course it's the quiet contentedness and constant hug even when you're trying to feel your loneliest. Of course it's wanting more for another person than you could want for yourself. Of course it's impossible to put into mere words.

If only you could be made to realize just how Of Course! It's all of these things; the moment you allow yourself the truth of that fact, oh how your life gains a new and worthwhile purpose!

Call me autistic, but I don't get it. It's painful to think about. Not because it's some hard problem with an answer. Because it's a million roads to nowhere. It's self-congratulations. It's as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Therefore, I think it holds no dignity, and only the most insidious kind of circumstantial descriptive honesty.

I make pains to depict it like I do above and not focus on “the brain chemicals.” I don't out of hand discount feelings or rushes of endorphins or general good feelings from being around good people and influences. I think if you boil love down to the very fact that your body reacts to the outside world, you're missing all the screwy things people actively choose to do with it.

But what if I were to believe in love? Maybe I don't want to say it. Or if I say it, feel hopeless and like a liar. Am I to put “cold hard [robot]-type facts and numbers” to it? Is it love after 2 years, 55 dinners, and 3 or more talks about children? Hardly.

As with the heart of most things, to me, it's in the details. If I was going to believe in love, it would look like a promise. No, not to someone about how you're going to feel in the future you have no grasp of. It would be to yourself. It would be a standard that only you could choose and only you could hold yourself accountable to. Tell me a million times you love me, I'll never get the message. If I promise myself I'll try to recognize when I think you mean it, now we've something to work with.

To me, love would resemble “the ease by which you hold a standard.” Take Kristen. Find 1 thing horribly objectionable and “unloveable” about Kristen. If you don't know or care who she is, pick your favorite kind of anything. Now tell me why it sucks. Can't? Won't? Don't want to think about it? Well, now you're getting an idea of the kind of people I want in my circle. Now you know how I can find myself with an inflated ego. It's never been hard to consider her, talk to her, think about or care about her. She's there whether I want her to be or not. Who she is isn't what I think about her, it's just what I can recognize. What I think she tells herself, about herself, or why she likes me, I believe.

To me, love looks like recognition. You hear things like “you can't choose who you love” which just seems like you should get your eyes checked. You can only see what you allow yourself to. You can only appreciate that which you have a capacity and willingness to open yourself up for. Why do I see so many people “falling in love” or it depicted in 99% of anything media related? There's a lot of kids recognizing kids. A lot of guilt recognizing guilt. A lot of insecurity and fear and willful ignorance that feels right at home in its partners arms. You carry the characters' plight.

I feel like when you choose, no not simply “a person,” but choose to hold dear, values and ideas and hard fought conceptions of yourself, your place, and who gets to share your podium, you start flirting with the ground floor of what my idea of love would look like. Love is allowed to act in spite of your worst demons. Love gets to always stand up as something you may not be doing right, but insists on reminding you of how you could be doing it better. More true to yourself. More respectful of what you see from the people around you.

The process, the “work,” comes before you step out into the world. Before you're capable of carrying out your version of The Notebook. Time is not a test, it's a testament. You don't get to one day “shut off” and “forget” why you loved something or someone. You never really buy the story of “moving on.” You may be able to calm your body or distract your mind. You didn't change the person. What you saw or what you felt can't be undone.

Now, love looks like coping. Or if you're dedicated and not just special, accepting or learning from. It's knowing that using the ever-fleeting word to speak to what you believe is so concrete inevitably bites you. It means carrying the weight of recognition. Taking what you thought you knew and watching it move in ways you couldn't anticipate, can't deal with, don't want, won't hear of. It's a faint pulse that accompanies your heart.

Love is the idea, that were you to believe in love, you always know what you should do, what you want to say, or where you want to go. You don't use it. You live it. You prove it. You just hope someone gets what you're doing.

[368] Talk The Walk

Suppose we assume that people start out with an amoral sense. I stress not immoral. But try and conceive of people who are, absolutely ingrained and prompted to behave certain ways over others given their genes, yet still as much or more so compelled by their surroundings. Limbo bimbos.

Now, simply suppose we're all human. Before you add the layer of what you think about human, certain things reign supreme independent of your perception. Easy stuff, right? Like, if I cut you, you'll bleed. Nothing about how you think will stop the blood from flowing. Maybe you can tell, I'm trying to get really complicated.

Say we're to impose a sense of “morality” on the human creature. If you bleed too much, you die. So in a world where we want to respect the human creature, people who cut people too deep so that they die, we can safely assume we don't want part of our culture.

I say this not to pretend like it's hard to understand. I simply think that “everything” needs to be broken down into its “duh, you stupid fuck” language.

Insofar as you experience feelings, you can generally assume most other people do as well. I'm fascinated by the idea of someone “respecting feelings.” I honestly have no concept of it. First, how you tell me you feel, I generally find suspect. Second, in that you relate your feelings as “the most” or “the hardest” or “the worst” I'm immediately turned off to your plight given your selfish naivety. Third, there's this grand assumption that I've never been, nor will ever be, able to experience your feelings or something tantamount.

I think when we play this game, we act like fools. I think it's often understood that the way I engage with life or with friends is with this sweep of the hand disregard for where you're coming from. It's more accurate to say I disrespect it. It's saying, I don't respect enabling my ability to do the same as you're doing with yourself. The more you conceive of yourself as “special” or “different” or a brilliant little butterfly, the farther away we'll ever be from being “real friends.”

My conception of “problem” is broad. If I were to play the rank and file game, how you feel doesn't break the top 20. At the top, would just be the various stupid ways in which people die. 1. Dying out of sheer, but actually known, ignorance. We didn't feed the people healthy food so they died from the things we very much understand about too much sugar. We understand lead to be a poison, so we kept poisoning people because big oil paid one scientist to vehemently disagree for 20 or so years. 2. Perhaps people dying “indirectly” from ignorant “fuck you” type behaviors. We're chasing terrorists. Keep the child body count coming. Not to discount men and women, but doesn't there seem to be something particularly special about blowing up children? We can't even get that in our video games.

My “problems” have everything to do with perception. Perception amongst friends. Perception of definitions. Perception of responsibilities. Perception of the capacity and nature of humanity. Perception of the future. Perception of my self and the degree in which I'm responsible of culpable. Perception of the nature of the conversation about you, me, or “it' in general. Perception and awareness dominate the reasons I do or don't do absolutely anything. This is why I ask you to speak the fuck up. I know too many “cool enough” people. You know what I'd rather have? Friends. I'd love to stop hesitating using the word.

When you don't speak, you don't stand for anything. You're not counted. You're not starting on the road to uncovering what you and your kind may be able to do about it. When you don't bitch, you're defaulting to complicit. You're the status quo, the problem, the reason it never gets better. Crazy people have a voice. It's fucking loud. It's fucking deadly. Unwise despots of spirit are ushered into puppet pulpits of power. Ask yourself why we can't fix things today. Ask yourself why you think your voice doesn't matter. Ask yourself why you just need to “get by” while you hold as many or more thoughts than I've ever shit out onto a page.

Every day we don't talk about things that matter I feel is wasted. Every day it weighs on my mind. Every day I'm fighting back a headache. Every day I find a reason to beat myself up or find a reason to stop trying. You can't even work your fingers under an inspiring or thought provoking article? You can't call me out on something you think I got wrong? You “prefer in face” to “on facebook” digressions as if there's a real difference or that I'm supposed to “just get” the difference and respect it? The only message I'm every taking away is that you don't give a fuck. Whatever you think you're saying, I'm going to tell you what I'm hearing. You. Don't. Give. A. Fuck.

And that's why I struggle with conceiving of friends. I can't keep taking for granted that we're the “smart elite” that not only see past my disposition, but “get it in all the same ways I do.” It's not that the problems of the world feel all that big or all that complicated. It's that I feel like I'm the only one who gives a fuck. I feel like I'm only one talking about them save the arbitrary number of reporters or celebrities I follow. We're a terrible example of the ground floor, the grassroots, or the “public awareness” of anything. I've hated this for as long as I've been able to talk about it, and I hate it even more in this moment.

And I know it's unfair, unwise, and ridiculous to feel this way! This is the sick sick irony that will follow me to my grave. But I don't know how else to speak to it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it until I play with coffee long enough to make money to start employing people to start behaving as I see fit. My capacity to feel lazy, jaded, disenfranchised and helpless don't mean I enjoy them or want to carry on as if I can't think of a fix. Fucking help me.