I want a Sunday kind of love and a forever kind of home
Love is the core of my being. I operate completely out of a place of love. When i dislike something or someone it’s more of an understanding that i love it the least. When i have been wronged by someone or abandoned my love doesn’t go away or really even diminish their place on my love totem, pyramid, list just falls.
The best way i can express how i love is through a memory of a lost love. One of my close friends, who i have to admit i am the reason we are no longer friends, asked me once if i missed anyone. I paused really feeling the depth of the question. I didn’t and really I still don’t. I think missing someone almost implies they are no longer with you. It implies, to me and my understanding of love, that you can no longer grasp their existence. I don’t miss anyone because I feel as if I am always with them. Even though she and I are no longer friends I still think of her when i’m being irrational or when I watch harry potter or when I come across artists in new york. She once told me that she had reasons for loving the people that she loved and I think about this every time i come to the conclusion that I love someone. For me love exists as an obvious. I love everyone and everything until proven otherwise.
Operating from this place of loving means that I have complex relationships with lots of things. I love money, fashion, art, traveling, expensive jewelry, designer brands, shopping, but I also understand how detrimental these loves are. I understand that loving these things makes me complicit in the the abuses they enact and the harm they cause. By loving a wasteful industry built on the exploitation of people and the planet I am contributing to my own detriment both presently and in the future. It’s the same complexity I feel for my country. I love America. I love being surrounded by people whose cultures are so different from mine and whose lives are so different. I love the mountain ranges and the deserts and the coastlines and the rivers and the lakes. I love the people and the land and the states from alaska to florida. However, I understand the grievances that people have with my country. I am not truly free here either. I understand that our history is plagued with blood and greed. That the land I’ve lived on all my life was stolen and is still being destroyed.
All this suffering and awareness is why I operate out of love. It was the love my ancestors had for their people and their culture that kept them alive in the face of oppression and persecution. It was my grandfathers love for my grandmother that took him across the rio grande so that he could provide for his family. It was love that sent my grandfather and his siblings to new york so that they could establish new lives and bring their families to a land of better opportunities. It was love that forged this new life for them on this side of the border.
But love is also suffering and suffocating. The love that my father often offered me were gifts as replacements for time and effort. It was money after snapping at me or blowing up. From both parents love was never apologizing but offering up food as a replacement for accountability. My parents love, mostly that of my mothers it choked me. It was keeping to myself and becoming antisocial in order to stay in her favor. My mothers love meant isolation and scrutiny. It meant having to let the big things slide so much I broke down over the little things.
I never felt i was enough for my mother, never felt smart or pretty or kind or ambitious. I never liked the right guys or the right music or fashion. I read too many books and could never sit through a tv show. I was 25 from 5 years old and I was arrested in that stage of development. Never learning how to ride a bike and never learning how to drive a car. I was too fat, ate too much, talked too much, was too much. I was in the wrong for acting too grown, but also consistently berated for not growing up fast enough.
Days ago I came across a video captioned “daddy issues make artists, mommy issues make writers.” I laughed it off then thought of the intersection of not only my interests, but also my traumas. I have been writing since I learned how to write. I have been drawing, sketching, crafting, photographing, etc. since i could remember. My hobbies have always been quiet hobbies. Ones i could do for hours on end without distracting or disturbing my parents. I had many cousins, but most of my life i have spent alone. I have made my own worlds, built people and stories up.
One thing you come to realize is how quickly you begin doing these things to real people. Friends became idols, people to compete with and to become. Every year was spent pulling friends along and getting bored of them and moving on to the next group. Creating connections so even if i felt lonely, i never had to sit alone. Reflection only happened when I had no one to mirror. When I spent all of 2020 and 2021 alone it allowed me to think about what i wanted and who i was. it was this isolation the finally opened my mind to a world outside my own head. Not only of the millions of lives that i consistently coexisted with, but with dreams outside of my own world. I applied to a university in scotland, i got my first job, i threw parties behind my mothers back. I snuck out to go to the beach and fought with my mother and decided to pursue nothing and everything. In my isolation I found myself lost and okay in this state.
When I graduated all my plans fell through and I made new ones. I moved out of my mother’s house. I got my own bank account and my own credit card and I made a plan for my own life. I flunked my first semester of college and then went to puerto rico for the fourth of july. I loved not only the people along the way, but the way the world never stopped moving. It didn’t wait for me to catch up. It forced me to act and moved and grow or get left behind. It blossomed my love from just a feeling to a state of being. I love out of an understanding that we may not always agree with or like each other but all people are deserving of space and love and respect.
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
Love isn’t a final destination though. I’m still running to somewhere or something. I’m still looking for myself. I know who I am and the core principals I operate with, but what do i with my life. What I was looking for isn’t it in miami. It isn’t in Orlando. And a part of me is beginning to realize it isn’t in Boston. Chasing the seasons never ends until you decide you are willing to brave them all, but I’m not ready to settle yet. I won’t settle for a city, I won’t settle for a boy, and I won’t settle for less than i’m worth, less than i deserve.
Sometimes you lose things and you wake up after mourning them for what feels like eternity only to realize that it was the best thing you never had. I wasn’t meant to stay with no plan in my hometown to let my life pass me by. I wasn’t meant to stay in my grandmothers home taking slow steps but never the big leap. I’ve broken hearts and I’ve left tears in the eyes of women i never should’ve, but when i come back home to tell them of my little corner of the world i know they’ll agree it was all part of the plan.
There is no plan right now. I just decided this chapter will end after a year. When you pick up the pen and write your own story you get to decide these things. I don’t know where i’ll land next. Maybe my story continues abroad or in the south or on the west coast. I know for now that when it comes i’ll be ready to jump head first. Leading with love means that for all the bad, i’ll find some good. I’ll make a home out of a house.
I’ll work on not building relationships up with people who only want to tear me down. I’ll work on setting boundaries with people who run in and out of my life. I’ll work on being a better listener to friends who are genuine. I’ll work on the biting feeling in the back of my head that all the love i put out in the world is to make up for slightly believing i’ll never receive any of it back.
Even when I know it’s wrong i reminisce about boys who liked me but not enough, about friends who hated me too much, and family who loved me but never liked me. There’s something so utterly childish about dwelling on the love you never got, the hate you didn’t deserve, but i haven’t grown up just yet. I haven’t gotten past myself just yet.
All I can do for now is love out of the sake of loving and live for the love life. I can kiss the picture, but never tell the boy. Cut my hair, bleach it, and turn my mother’s voice off telling me i never make myself look good. I’m gonna chase the wind until it brings me home, gonna try on a million different versions of me before i find the one that fits. I’m going to learn to let myself accept love not just give it. I’m going to find a man who wants me at my highs and lows. There’s no science to figuring life out. There’s no right way to live. There is a million reasons to do what you think is right and wander while you can. I can’t love myself enough out of regret. I can’t will myself to stay where I know i’m not meant to.
Yesterday all I knew was keep going, Today all I know is keep going, Tomorrow who knows what I’ll know. But I’ll follow the winds and the voice in my head until they both settle down, until i’ve found the place to call my own.
