****TW for (very slight) body horror; brief mentions of blood, violence
first, i am screaming. in the next instant, i am pushing the sweaty hair away from his angel face.
- do you love me?
he asks it like he’s asking if he’ll go to heaven. blood gurgles from his mouth.
- anna. you still love me?
i choke out:
- ‘course.
he frowns.
- and if I'd shot you. would you love me, then?
- I'd be dead, baby.
- but before that. when i pulled the trigger, and the bullet kissed you. would you love me then?
- yes.
finally, his eyes flutter closed.
- oh. oh, that's good.
Untitled.
People keep asking me why I don’t date; why I turn down everyone, regardless of how lovely or attractive they may be. They’re asking the wrong question. The right question is, why does love feel like sticking someone with a knife?
I can’t say this to my coworker or the classmate who won’t stop texting me. To them, I say, “I need to focus on myself right now.” What I really mean is, “To subject someone to loving the person I am today is a selfishness I cannot presently afford.”
Love, I think, is something akin to submission. ‘The mortifying ordeal of being known.’1 It is kneeling at someone’s feet and emptying your innards in front of them and onto the floor. It is holding out your bloody hands and asking, “Still? Do you care for me, still?” Flaying your chest apart and holding open the wound for inspection.
But that is only how it feels. Most of the time, to love someone is only to admit, I have a body, and it is not perfect; I have a mind, and it is not perfect; I have a soul, and it is not perfect. Most of the time, we are not nearly as horrible as we perceive ourselves to be. The very worst parts of ourselves are only natural. Only human.
So why does asking to be loved feel so viscerally humiliating? Why does it feel like peeling back skin?
Some possibilities:
Low self-esteem
Fear of rejection
Childhood harms
Side effect of Original Sin
Concern for hurting the other
Accumulation of a lifetime’s worth of guilt
Terror at the prospect of receiving what one desires
“We accept the love we think we deserve.” - Chbosky
Belief that the other is too good or pure and may be corrupted
Or, my favorite, all of the above.
There is this common (and commonly controversial) saying: “You cannot love someone else until you love yourself”. I believe this sentiment to be wholly misleading, but not entirely untrue. I think when people hear this, they believe it means that they need to be mentally healthy, or have great self-esteem, or think of themself as a decent person who is worthy of love. This is not true; those things are about liking yourself. If liking yourself were necessary for love, it would be as rare as a daisy in the winter. What is necessary is loving yourself - this is an entirely different monster. Loving yourself means acknowledging your own humanity. It means striving not to be unnecessarily cruel or unkind. Working to treat yourself with some level of compassion, even when it is difficult. Allowing yourself the right to be flawed. Sometimes it simply means making it to the next morning and allowing yourself to think, ‘well done.’
This is, of course, only my opinion. Perhaps it is possible to have a healthy relationship without loving oneself. It is certainly not the only requirement, as I well know. For me, at least, I am holding out until the prospect of spilling my guts again doesn’t feel like it will kill me. Until my therapist can ask me a relatively non-evasive question without me bursting into tears. Until telling someone my middle name or my favorite song doesn’t feel like a public disrobing.
I fear I’ve made the whole thing sound unpleasant, with all the talk of guts and humiliation. And it can be. But mostly, the fear is outweighed by the excitement. Intimacy is a trust fall (what a perfect and appropriate metaphor!). It is allowing yourself to engage with the possibility of pain with faith that the other person will shield you from it. How romantic! How human. With this definition, we can conceive that different things imply differing levels of intimacy to different people; to some, it may entail the revealing of personal information, to others, the body, to still others, weakness or vice. Every time we engage in an act that we perceive to be intimate, we are subjecting (submitting) ourselves to the risk of injury. We are revealing our soft underbelly where we are easiest to wound. This is an act of trust. And love is trust, made endless.
If you have not yet the pleasure of an understanding like this; if you think the imagery I’ve been describing is over-dramatic and weird — rest assured the time will come when the excerpts I have clipped below ring true; when you will be faced with the prospect of a mutual recognition so profound it sets something aching strong and deep in the core of you. Until then, may you rehearse this sort of compassion with yourself, so that when the day comes, the loving acceptance of your imperfections will not be foreign to you.
And of course:
I don’t really believe this! It was for the drama…