Of late, I have succumbed to my ADHD and become addicted to tumblr. One of the features of this social media platform is fellow tumblrers (yes, it's a word; I just used it, didn't I?) submitting certain questions to be answered publicly. The act of answering them is a fun exercise, and it has become yet another place where I write things I should probably be publishing.
This is one of them.
A (If I’m in love):
Yes, with quite a few people as well as ideas and entities, most of which, in retrospect, I sort-of wish I had been able to resist (but we can’t really resist the ways in which our heart desires something or someone, can we?). I have been in love (at least, I think it’s “in love”; I don’t know now if what I have felt has been dependence, love, or safety) for nearly ten years with the woman who wears the ring that matches mine.
We met completely by chance, and the connection between us was deep and immediate. At the time, we both shared many more qualities than we share now (or rather, more than we share now consistently - when I am depressed, I become withdrawn and slightly agoraphobic, which are two qualities simmering within her), and that camaraderie of personality seemed to bind us together, despite a 15-year age difference. There was an emotional connection, and there was also a physical connection, as well, one which allowed for all of our needs to be met.
But then, in what seems like the ultimate sacrifice, she helped birth the new me, the one who was always meant to be but I had hidden. In doing so, I changed in all kinds of magical, fantastic ways. I became more gregarious, more open, more EVERYTHING - and I became the one thing she couldn’t open all of herself to: a woman. And so, the parameters of our relationship drastically changed. In some ways, our emotional connection deepened, but in many other important ways, our overall connection became more tenuous. In being willing to sacrifice an unhappy husband, she was agreeing (and I did not realize this or maybe things would be different) to sacrifice a life rich with physical intimacy.
So here we stand…four years later, bound together but being pulled apart by forces we either don’t see (her) or can’t resist (me), still in love, still loving, but doomed in all the right ways.
Is it possible to be in love with more than one person? The older I get, the more I realize that there is very little in this world that is absolute, and Love is one of them. A few years ago, I met a person whom I fell in love with knowing, being around; I fell in love with her existence. In no possible way could there ever be anything between us (nor do I want there to be anything beyond a friendship for the ages), but that has not stopped my heart from attaching itself to this person in the most wonderful and perfect ways.
And then every day, I seem to fall in love with all manner of different things: with feelings and desires, with the way a particularly perfect cup of coffee warms my entire body and with the inhale from an accompanying cigarette, with the way the sky looks at a certain moment, with the workings of the mind of a 12-year-old girl who is destined to rule the world, with a breeze across my face that seems to be sharing the secrets of the Universe in a language I can neither speak nor understand, with Love itself…and I wonder if instances and moments can understand that they are what keep me holding on.
Do not allow yourself to be disillusioned: it does not get easier as you get older; it only becomes more confusingly clear.
O (Where would I like to travel):
I wish to travel all of Europe and immerse myself in the hidden history of it. Primarily, I wish to wander and live in two Hungarian villages, each the ancestral homeland of one of my grandparents. The homes in which my ancestors were born, lived, loved, and which they left behind to discover a new life in the new world still stand (in one case, still in the family), and I want to sit on the floors my great-grandparents sat upon as children; I want to stand by the hearths and smell the richness of bacon and cabbage and peppers and paprika that were among the few memories that stayed with them until the very end; I want to walk upon the land wherein the pulverized bones of a thousand years of my people enrich the soil. I want to see eyes that look distantly familiar and hear voices that sound like home.
S (2 habits):
Smoking; inventing fantastic scenarios inside my mind that rarely come true.
T (3 things I love unconditionally):
My children; my identity; a healthy sense of wonder and imagination.
X (3 turn-ons):
1. Intimate touching: the slipping of a hand into mine and then squeezing; being drawn into someone’s lap and feeling her hand stroke my hair or brush my forehead; a leg draped unselfconsciously over mine with the expectation I will run my fingers over it and rub her feet or draw circles and hearts with my fingers or trace, “I love you,” over and over again; the incomparable beauty of that feeling when someone wants to pull up tight against me in a bed with cold sheets on a chilly night (I have rather forgotten what all of these feel like).
2. Wonder and imagination.
3. A highly-developed sense of romance - crying at the same parts in the same movies as I am and wanting my hand in hers while this is happening; the tiny compliments that let me know she still not only notices but desires all of me; unexpected messages with delicious confessions….the list could go on and on.