Subtextual Love
Every Valentine's Day I ask myself the same question: what is love?
My logical, analytical part of my mind tries to equate it as some sort of reciprocity, fidelity, or duty, but I can't explain all of it.
I've said "I love you" before, to a woman whom I knew would've loved to hear it. I didn't know if I actually loved her or not. I liked that she made me happy, especially in a time in my life when I was depressed. But love? I have no idea. The whole thing felt like something performative. Something I thought people say in intimate moments because I didn't want to let go of the feeling. I've never said those words to a woman since.
The best I can do is be honest and say "I like you" and hope you'll understand the weight of those words when I say them - even after years into a relationship.
Oftentimes love feels like an unspoken arrangement: I love you, you love me, and everything that we do or say to each other outside of this arrangement is rooted in this unspoken feeling.
That's certainly how I've been taught to love by my parents, not explicitly, but in how they display love to each other, and to me and my brothers. There's no physical expression of love - no hugs or kisses. Just acts of service and devotion to each other. Subtextual love.
The moments that I find absolutely adorable in movies and TV are the moments when characters do or say things that glide over the arrangement - Seb and Mia finally locking eyes after years in La La Land, or Fran saying "Shut Up and Deal" to Baxter at the end of The Apartment.
Even in my own life I find these moments highly attractive - when a woman rolls her eyes at a joke I make, or when a friend calls me anything but my name. I feel those moments way more.
It does come at a price though. Since love is unspoken, nothing is acknowledged, and nothing is communicated. I've learned the hard way that the subtextual love is not how relationships are built, but it's effortlessly navigating through the solid architecture of what is built together.
It's why marriage works, it's a tested and tried template for a relationship. Fit two people into the template, pack their bags, and send them off, because it will most likely work out.
But it doesn't excite me. I don't want a cookie cutter marriage, friendship, or relationship.
The only thing I have control over is myself, and over the years, I've learned the many different ways I express affection to others. I constantly push buttons and boundaries with everyone I know: I'll say mean things to you, flirt with you, hug you, kiss you, fight you, throw you down and pin you, disappear from your life for months, write you poetry or handwritten letters. I've come to learn, over the years, how aggressive I express my love - be it others or with myself. It's loud, messy, physical, and stretches the extremities.
Each one of my relationships is constantly evolving and will change over time, but the common denominator is me. I've learned I can't control how you love me, I can only decide how I show up. However, I'm yet to master controlling my intensity. As much as I stretch the boundaries of affection with others, I do it with myself ten-fold because I'm done being subtextual with myself.
I want to keep loving and fighting with you and with myself. I want to keep loving and fighting for you and for myself. I'll wear my heart on my sleeve, and go out with you, and be as bare as I can be because it's liberating.
I just want to learn how to love myself.