Love

Here’s how it happened: When I was nineteen I broke up with my boyfriend on his birthday. I’ve been single ever since.

Curses aside, I’m not really that interested in how I got here. Although some people like to make a deal out of it. I recently dated a guy who said to me, “You’re so nice. I’m amazed you’ve been single for so long.” It was a compliment but it annoyed me still. Either relationships have nothing to do with character. Or I’m not nice.

I don’t know I just went to the places I wanted to go to and did the things I wanted to do. There were times, late at night in foreign cities lugging my suitcase and just a handful of cash, dark empty streets and thinking I swear to god I’m never doing this again when I get home I’m getting a goddamn boyfriend. And there were times, too, usually sun on my bike cold ocean water and thinking I never want a partner, he would just stand between me and everything in the world. The point is, when it came to relationships, I never really knew what I wanted and I never had a plan and it’s really just accident (I think) that I’m here now, but I find it a very interesting place to be.

Love is a story that we often tell amongst ourselves and it begins with saying the words “I love you” which at first are a big deal but then become not a big deal. There’s meeting the parents moving in together marriage maybe kids. Death or a breakup that births a best selling album/narrative poem.

Love is a word that I avoided when I was younger and dating, but now, in small revolt I use it often. Sometimes people ask me, am I really in love, do I know what I’m saying? Thanks for checking but yes. One can feel alone while in a long term partnership, so why can’t I be in love in my aloneness?

We talk about love like it’s linear, on a graph where the axes are time and knowledge. But I’m curious could love be radial? And what would it look like then?