The Labyrinth of Loving

“Choose your hard.” - Dan Nova

Song Pairing

Click here to skip the serious-talk to the erotica at the bottom :)

Here’s a piece of thunder to kick off this sometimes fresh, sometimes stale ramble: 

I think it is a common mistake to confuse letting others know they are valued for commitment. 

Now this whole “loving” topic has a specific acidity that gnaws at my hippocampus. I mention love through this essay in all facets and spectrums including solitude, friendship, and romance. It’s a topic of vulnerability and naiveness, of gripping really hard and never holding, of control and not. It is a topic that is beside itself. What I mean by this is that love is never the problem: continuity is. Yet the word love can make one equally shrivel and expand at the same time depending on what speaks first from the personal cache of emotional pasts.

As youth, we are dropped into relational dynamics unequipped, assuming everyone shares the same blueprint of care. We then realize through communicative strain, that although love is the bedrock, there are a lot of cultural, social, and personal layers sheathing the capacity to let the core of love be the origin of our actions.

A sheen of retrospect begs rumination of what if’s and what now’s after lessons have been learned and then blooms a healthy dread of sorts for the knowing that we will confront new people, with new blueprints, and we will learn again. There is a unique pain that comes from shedding expectations. A strange mix of grief for an idealism that you didn’t know you harbored and also a particular empowerment for acknowledging the truth of human twists and turns.

I think it is a common mistake to confuse letting others know they are valued for commitment.

With the fact of human imperfection in mind, what comes as a result of a cultural norm centered on avoiding directness in favor of avoidance is a seemingly unshared pain that is actually quite common. After multiple dealings with responses such as ghosting, coldness confused with boundary setting, and projected indifference to one another as a look of maturity, we begin to recoil. Think of the countless love songs howling the plights of being “young and naïve". But what if this naiveness is just the belief that love is stronger than the current fashion of cultural pain? *We asked ourselves why would you never speak to someone ever again until a person comes along, who was once soft, but became calcified by others who were once soft, but became calcified, and all of a sudden you realize you need to fortify yourself from other’s fortifications.

And so the inclination, as a response to wounding, to close off and play the leveling game of vulnerability grows. You start overanalyzing to yourself: well if I reach out and let them know I care then they might take it the wrong way and think that I mean I want to own them, but really I just think highly of them and I adore their cat and would love for them to exist my life somehow, but it's probably best to just not let them know so they think that it doesn't bother me because that appears more "put together” then saying something. Meanwhile you likely both are just craving some care. Paradoxically, tenderness becomes unavailable because we all doubt our love and offerings will be respected because at one point they were not. So we become silent, slow, and set boundaries because the norm is that you don't let each other know that you are loved despite expectations and conditions. (That being said, I do think silence, distance, and love can coexist. All things have an expiration date, and with that in mind, cherishing is still possible).

We must protect ourselves against each other because caring has become a calculation, and we are worried that we will not be reciprocated with the thing we all crave so we keep it to ourselves. In truth , I note that a class on vulnerability and how to handle our feelings doesn’t exist in the American education system. Maybe because such things are wisdom, and you may have to go to your local nursing home, sleep in a graveyard, huff incense, or take some psychedelics in a glacial cave to find that.

The paradox of all this again is a pattern I observe unfold in multiple facets of the human project. It seems easier to avoid complication by ignoring others, but long-term, pain wells and complication and drama metamorphoses in the heart. What is disregarded will disregard you back. By tensing to avoid dilemma, dilemma grows quietly in corners. Choose your hard.

I've settled enough, though actively working and honing in on, yes, being more cautious about and honoring the investment of my valuable time into others before I know their capacity to respect me, but refusing to stifle loving. I think they can exist together: protection of the self and loving nevertheless. I would rather engage in the privilege of offering care and love whether or not it is returned, then not engage at all and guarantee silence. I say this certainly without ease! I think these divided times call for valuing each other openly no matter the return on investment. Because if you reinforce someone or something, the act itself returns the gift. If the cultural norm adopts this vulnerability, not without drama, mistakes, and necessary thresholds, but imperfectly, nature guarantees return and confidence to give again.

Shedding boundaries because we don't need them anymore. How mature.

*I want to acknowledge here that this text is oriented toward woundings and boundary-setting in relationships, and for those of us who have trauma and histories of violation, I want to acknowledge that I by no means am attempting to invalidate the boundaries and complications that arise for the vast array of personal experiences rooted in unethical harm.

Now for an erotica letter Nature gave me and my friend Elle to give to you.

(If you skipped to this section, I hope you feel nice and sexy after reading this: if you do, that’s basically the summary of the above section.)

---

Hi Delicious One,

No wind of mine could erase the sandy curve of your heel pressing into me. All night, I couldn’t get you off my mind. I tried to use my tides to wash the trace of your fleeting form. The mundane kept corrupting me. I will never be the same. I am left windless by your naughty obsessions and the fruity way you get attached to your ideas. Whether you’re volcano boarding, steeping my leaves, or having a panic attack, I can’t help but want to envelop you with the thermals of my weathering passion. Please baby, keep the window open?

In the meantime, here’s what I imagine I will do to you if I see you again. First and foremost, I intend to erode your worries and serenade you with this inspired song:

shhhhhh

crackle crackle

rustle

swish

swoosh

Once you are slick with the sun and the sea, I will get that polyester off you. This is where I may get a bit overzealous. The thought of your contours and the minerals left behind by your habits helps me rise the moon. I am so nourished by your sounds.

After all, I think we are made of each other.

Until we meet again,

Nature

And now, the stage turns to you - I would love to hear your own field notes on these topics. Feel free to continue the conversation below.