Sometimes you want something so badly it makes you crazy. Though it may appear within reach, and right, everything you do to bring it closer and close the deal just pushes it further and further out of reach.

I guess I'm like that with people. I can reach a safe state of peaceful detachment as long as I don't care. As long as I don't care, people float to me like daisies in the wind.

But once I sense some connection, however slight (or even, maybe, imaginary), I completely lose control of myself. I want to be understood so badly, though: I crave it like nothing else. And on top of that understanding, I want to be loved for the eccentricities and oddities that most people only tolerate (that is, if they aren't driven away).

I wonder if this comes down to me failing to be the person I want to be. I long to be apathetic and carefree, and to find the magic blanket that will let me stifle my passion. If it were up to me, I'd stop caring about anything until I was reasonably sure of safety. And in that way, I'd stop hurting. All these little pains build up -- what some call the little deaths.

I guess on some level I'm invitiing these rebuffs. Whenever I've been afraid of something, my method for overcoming it has always been to force myself to face that fear over and over. It's worked for using revolving doors. For crossing against the light, I'm at least better some days. But I can't seem to numb myself to the aches for friendship, or the pangs for love. I still want both those things, to be loved by someone that I also love.

And while I can distract myself, I can't make those longings go away. They're always there, ready to split my soul and heart open wide and raw at the slightest provacation. Each time, something tells me, "this could be it: the friends you've lost to circumstance; the love you've only imagined."

On an endless loop, incapable of learning this sad fact, I believe it each time. She'll be good enough. He'll be perfect. But again...forever...I end up crying myself to sleep.

Most people are terrible. Immediately inadequate. A few aren't. Most of those, I effectively scare away. The few that remain are blemished by unforgivable imperfections. My mind's without balance, without grays to balance the blacks and whites. There are only clouds and blue despair, and the bloody wounds of my beaten heart, which I never grant a single round of recuperation before getting back in the ring.

To those I have frightened away, I'm sorry (for both of us). But I do understand.

I will not come crawling back to you with my tail between my legs this time. We both deserve better. The next time I go to you, it will be a visit between equals, and my choice. Not my obligation, and not my need.

Maybe it's too late to find someone else who will love me, and I'm going to end up alone with my fifty cats and cupboards full of swiss cake rolls. I know this is the risk I'm taking. It's a risk I've accepted, though, because...

So this time I'm not coming back. I'm going to be alone, and probably lonely, but it's better than continuing to pretend that you, my security blanket, are securing me in the ways I need.

I love you, but can't do this anymore. I want understanding. I crave it, and I think I need it. Please understand.

 

But I know you won't.

No one is automatically entitled to love.

I read this sentence on Craigslist a week or so ago and experienced a mild epiphany. For almost as long as I can remember, I've been upset by the love I've lost and the love I lack. From small crushes and full-blown relationships, to short- and long-term friendships, to family both immediate and extended, I can never find someone who loves me in quite the way I want. Sadly, this has proven to be the case even if they love me with all that they have, or vice-versa. Or both.

And so, I now ask myself: since I'm not entitled to love just for waking up every day and refraining from murder or other social faux pas, have I really done anything to earn it? If I'm honest with myself, the answer is no.

I suspect the general understanding is that the one pays for love in with the currency of companionship, attention, and affection that one bestows upon others. Unfortunately, if only one person is giving these things, the relationship (whatever its context) quickly becomes co-dependent, a water jug pouring onto the desert sand only to be baked away. That's not bartering love—it's just being wasteful.

Pouring one's efforts into an unworthy or unaccepting vessel does not make one deserving of love. This would be akin to saying that anyone who puts money into the stock market deserves to break even at the very least. As with money, love shouldn't (and doesn't) work that way; in both cases, you must either plan carefully, or be prepared to lose everything. Making a huge investment (loving someone) doesn't entitle you to riches (having that love returned).

People who make an argument to the contrary always seem to be sipping from the intoxicating elixir of co-dependency, and (falsely) imagining it's a noble form of unconditional love. Take Quiz Kid Donnie Smith in the movie Magnolia:

I really do have love to give; I just don't know where to put it.

This is awkward and clingy Donnie Smith pouring out his heart to beefy bartender Brad. Donnie buys Brad drinks during his shift and professes great, deep love for him. Love, though?

Let's look at what Brad and Donnie are each receiving as a result of this "love."

Donnie's really the one benefitting most in this situation. If he really wanted to give his love, he'd find someone who wanted to take it more than someone he wanted to give it to. He'd be motivated to find out who that person is and how to make him or her happy accordingly. Brad knows he's hot and has sad old/older men hitting on him all the time. But who wants to know what Brad wants, beyond a means to the end of bedding him?

So I come back to my lack of love, and my lack of entitlement. I want love to be about me; I don't think that's rare. I want to lose my breath in anticipation in a relationship, or have a friendship with someone who complements me perfectly in every way. I want to have family members I'd choose instead of people I'm stuck with. In all these cases, love is about me. I'm almost as spendthrift as Quiz Kid Donnie Smith when it comes to dispersing my affections, and consequently faring almost as poorly.

I suspect you can only know you're making better investments, and earning and deserving love, when you have it successfully received and returned by another person. Their reciprocation means that you have gotten to know them sufficiently to give them what they needed, instead of merely what you wished to provide. It could happen with the individual you lust after at first sight. More likely, it can happen with someone who lusts for you first.

I suppose in an ideal case, what one lover wants to give and what the other lover needs to receive would be identical, and given mutually. That's what we all hope for, I suppose: the effortless affair, the unmarred compatibility.

It's probably all a myth, though. And because of this, we'd all do better to stop wasting and/or mis-labeling our love. To earn love and receive it in return, a good starting point might be to look beyond the hot bartenders.

Yeah, for all you know
This could be
The difference between what you need
And what you want

Matchbox Twenty, "The Difference"

I believe many struggle with their needs and wants because, sadly, occasionally they're both mutually exclusive and wholly indistinguishable from each other. And of course, admitting a need is admitting a weakness, while describing a want is an assertive expression of choice. It's easier to keep vulnerability close to your vest.

Most of my time these days has been focused on identifying what I want. I've been musing about things like inspiration, and pride, and excitement, all while forgetting (or close to it) about the less glamorous traits that serve as the glue in relationships. Things like trust, honesty, and devotion. Things like stability.

And so, I sometimes worry about becoming the woman in the joke about going husband-shopping where the men get better on every floor. At some point, you're likely to find everything you need, and, also likely, a good deal of what you want as well. But do you keep going anyway, chasing a perhaps impossible ideal, only to end up alone?