Riches/Wonders

People have--believe it or not--asked me whether I believed in love. The answer is yes and always yes. What I've come to doubt is my own interpretation of it. I have always defined love as "valuing the well-being of another over one's own." But in practice, I'm always unsure. Would I, at my own expense, push M. out of the way of a bus? Yes, or so I hope. But that's nonsense, of course, and has nothing to do with reality. A more relevant question: what if we had to separate for school or work? (Which is, in fact, imminent.) If we can't hold it together, if that turns out to be the end, if our relationship burns on the altar of self-actualization--would that mean I never loved her? Or that I did and it ran its course? Or that I did and simply failed? And which would be the least terrible?

And I do love her. This is real. To whatever extent "real" can be pinned down, anyway. I had planned to be more cautious, but caution fell by the wayside pretty early on, and probably was never something I could've expected from myself. We plan trips and go places, do things that we wouldn't if we had been alone. We sat on my porch on Halloween night and gave out candy. We cook each other dinner. We listen to each other's favorite bands. Will listening daily to the two Mountain Goats CDs she made me make me love her better? Maybe. I'll try. I may be burned out, but I can still glow. I'm beginning to understand all those obnoxious couples' rituals. Why my roommates spend time on inefficient recipes and watch silly TV shows. Emotions alone don't persist. Persistence persists.

This is something outside of ourselves, or at least outside of me. I'm actually kind of amazed at the way human beings can make time for each other when they really want--I've seen it before, of course, sporadically, but it's even more staggering this time because it's me. I've always thought that caring for someone is the only way to step outside one's own mortality, but am only beginning to understand what that means. I am a two-dimensional thing that has suddenly found itself turned inside-out. Being alone for too long makes me feel not like myself. Some part of me has been removed from inside, carefully wrapped in brown paper, and locked in a vault to which I have only half of the key.

I remember the words I wrote to myself the last time I was in a new relationship. They didn't read like this.

One of the first nights M. spent here, I had one of those dreams I used to have all the time that is best described with a Smiths song title. And the descending disappointment and coldness, when I woke from it in the dark. But then I turned over and saw M. sleeping, and felt a rush of happiness and relief that I'd never known, nor read, nor imagined. I can only hope M. has had such a moment, perhaps when I was looking in another direction or preoccupied with something else, when she could've had the privacy to feel such a thing. For these moments, I think, the uncanniness, the eternal feeling of having misplaced something important, is worth it.