This Is The Kind Of Love I Wish I Had
The thing with love is that I have all these expectations of what it’s supposed to be like and I try hard to love you in that way, but I wonder if it’s an almost impossible feat. Love is supposed to be this all consuming, irrevocably life changing emotion that I can’t escape. I’m supposed to feel tingles in my toes and them work their way to my brain and I should feel this warmth that is better than any other high I will ever feel in my life. I should lose all ability to control my desire to mash up against you. I am not supposed to be able to curb the cravings I have to taste your mouth. My eyes should always linger too long on your lips or you hips or your ass or whatever else it is that does it for me. I should always want to smell you because the special mixture of your sweetness and saltiness should make my heart flutter too rapidly, too impetuously. And it that sensation of never being able to catch my breath around you that drives me to the edge of insanity and back, wishing that I was locked away in a room where I could never see you again but knowing that without you, I would fall into a pit of sadness and depression and longing.
And maybe what I’m describing is not love. Maybe it’s passion. But isn’t it one in the same? Isn’t love about being with the one person that gets you in a way no one else does? You should understand that when I say “yo” I really mean “I have a lot to tell you and I need you to ask me what’s on my mind.” Or that when I cuddle into you and press my head into your chest, in that specific angle, it’s because I am missing my grandmother in the most painful way and I’m trying to hold in the tears but really I just want you to tell me that it’s going to be okay. Or when I come home from work in an exceptionally good, which almost always never happens, it’s because my boss made me feel like a total winner but I don’t want to sound boastful or gloat, so I want you to ask me about what it is that is making me so happy. And when you pass a bookstore, or a record store, you stop in and buy me something you know I want without ever having to ask me what it is I want because you know me so well. And throughout all this, I never want to be apart from you because functioning without you means living without a lung or a heart and it means that there is this impending, inescapable doom. And yet, I function without you even when I don’t want to because just the knowledge that you too are thinking of me is enough to get me through the day.
And that is love and that is passion because one cannot exist without the other. I wonder if you and I will ever have that because after so long, I know that I can exist without you and I know that you don’t think of me. I want to be okay with that but I know I never will be. A part of me wonders if we’ll make it, but a part of me that is convincing and louder and steadier tells me that we wont. That it’s only a matter of time. I hate that it is that thought that makes my heart beat too fast. It is that thought that brings me to the edge of insanity but it never pulls me back to normalcy. And your scent is one I avoid because it makes me cringe. Your lips are too rough and your hips too slim and your ass non-existent and I can’t find anything about you that does it for me. I avoid mashing up against you because there is no part of me that ever wants to. And maybe it’s because you don’t know me or think of me when you pass a bookstore or record store. Or maybe it’s because you don’t know my heart aches to talk to my grandmother just one more time, or how I hate my job because I kick people out of their homes but the one thing that keeps me going back every day is knowing that my boss will make me feel smart and appreciated and validated. You don’t get that when I say “yo” I just want to talk and the sad thing is that people I have known for less time know exactly what it means when I sigh and I don’t even have to say a word. You and I, we are not in tune with each other. And there is no way I can ever change that even though I wish so deeply that I can. I’m sorry for that. But I wish you were sorry too because that means that there is hope. And the thing with love is that I have all these expectations of what it’s supposed to be like and when I try to love you in that way, I realize that it’s an impossible feat.