The Twenty-Sixth One.

Morning, 

Subheading: Putting the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle.

It begins in the undercurrents

where it counts.

They want your edges,

your realities, your dreams, 

fascinated and captivated,

minds meeting in the center,

where separate worlds collide. 

Magnetic magic

only deepening in time.

So promise me

you'll take no one

who shies 

from your oceans.

Your tides. 

-Victoria Erickson

I have always felt this certain way about love, specifically in this blog I am referring to romantic love, and nearly everyone I have explained this to has told me it is... well, weird. 

I don't need someone to reciprocate my version of love for me to feel that way toward them. Feelings don't have deadlines; we all experience and move through love at our own pace. It has never occurred to me that someone moving at their pace was an indication that I shouldn't move at mine. This has been true both when I have felt in love first (more common), and when I received an admission of love before I felt it. 

There is this pressure that people seem to feel when you confess your love that, if they don't feel quite the same, they should end the relationship. "It's a power imbalance. It's taking advantage." That line of thinking has always felt really... accusatory? It says, "You must want more from me than I am ready to offer." It assigns intent to the person who proclaims their love that they expect something to change, and infers the other person must not want it to. Kind of a bold accusation toward both parties. 

Love, for me, is when someone matters to me. I mean that so much that it is tattooed on my arm. "You matter to me; simple and plain and not much to ask from somebody." Time together, knowing each other intimately, and sharing space matters. This is what it means to me, though. Other people don't mean that when they say I love you. Other people come from a mono-normative place where loving someone may mean "I believe I want to spend the rest of my life with (only?) you, I want to build a home with you, I want to raise children together." or a myriad of other things. If they aren't ready to make that kind of verbal commitment they won't say the words "I love you."

So you see, it's about intent. I don't know anymore if I think I will spend the rest of my life with someone, and whether I do or don't isn't really important to me anymore. What's important to me is honesty, openness, connection. When I tell you I love you, what I am saying is, "Tomorrow isn't promised for so many reasons, and if we don't have a tomorrow, I want you to know today that what we've shared is beautiful to me. The fact that we have walked the same path matters to me. It will matter long after you're gone. Thank you for what you've given, and what you've allowed me to give." I believe that, when I come at it from that place, me saying I love you doesn't need to change anything if you just feel another way about that word. If you're able to graciously receive my affection, I'm in.

What's changing in me lately is being brave enough to ask myself, "But what if they're not? What if it isn't the fact that they don't love me in that way, but that they don't want me to love them?" and trying harder to both recognize and accept that. Not only that, but what to do after that acceptance.

I think I've stopped wanting to be in love with someone, and started wanting to be in love with someone. With someone in person, and practice, and meaning.

I want to melt into a kiss so tender and reverent that it shouts our intent at the top of its lungs.

I want to touch someone physically and emotionally who craves depth and see love, a shared version of love, reflected in their eyes. 

I want sex that makes us quake.

I want friendship, and laughter, and the comfortable silence that can come after.

I go through phases in my journey of being non-monogamous where I am open to various relationship styles, some more "serious" and some more "casual". (I hate quantifying relationships like that.) Right now though, I am being vulnerable enough to admit that if it doesn't look like this, I don't want it. I don't want to be pursued by anyone that doesn't want it, either. 

What sharing this means in the grand scheme of our lives is something to be figured out as we go. It's not a promise that it will always feel this way, but that it feels this way now, and that matters. 

Come find me in the tides.

As usual, I hope you enjoyed this stuff, and come back for more things.