desire path, i want to turn into you
NOTHING'S GONNA BE THE SAME AGAIN! NO NOTHING'S GONNA BE THE SAME AGAIN!
December 11, 2022 …but love hurts too. Stable, constant love hurts like a long, long run. An ache, an invasive thought, a fear, doubt (in myself and the circumstance). How can I sit so comfortably in love and suddenly ask to be desired in a way that was never established to begin with?
All I had ever known was mantle love.
If we are lucky, we find an object so deserving of our love that we want to do everything we can to protect it. We hide it from the weather, we secure it in its place, we keep it far from time. Cherished like an heirloom and appreciated for how properly I sat above the fireplace; this is still love. I was still loved. And it was easy love (to receive and give)… I knew nothing better. On that mantle, I learned that I was worthy of adoration.
But on the mantle, time was to be remembered, not made. At some point, it all started to blend together and all the things I expected started looking like all the things I remembered and in that mobius strip, I lost the present. But yes, I was loved. That is what differentiates the mantle from hell. That is what makes the mantle nice; that type of security feels good if you need it. It was all I wanted for a long time for a lot of different reasons and I think plenty of people want it too. A lot of people find happiness there but I could never find it myself… it always seemed to be on the other side of something else. If not, then it was the next something else, or the next.
Eventually, I started to wonder what love must be if my happiness was neither an input nor an output. Or rather, how love could be if not from or for my happiness. I started wondering what about love I have ever taken for granted. I started asking my past and future selves for permission to exist in the present. As I started clearing layers of dust that had collected atop that mantle, I demanded a new type of attention; one that acknowledged my own becoming from a pair of eyes that were willing to see me change. But the thing about mantle love is that it will always be mantle love— at least that’s what I think. Those eyes only knew my static image. Admired, adored, cherished… never challenged, never weathered.
August 20, 2023 We are taught that we will always walk away [from romance] empty handed. And yet, I am love. I know love and I know I am deserving of it and I know I can give it. I care about people who care about me, I continue to love beyond romance and therefore, I am not empty.
September 24, 2023 I am relearning the intersection of love and romance. Because love is full and open and easy and anyone can love and be loved. I know for certain that I am deserving of love and I am capable of loving wholly… Love is active. Love is work. Romance is… perhaps just the facade. What I had to realize was that being told I was loved and loving by obligation was not enough.
September 28, 2023 Is it possible to feel nurtured without feeling pitied? Can I be loved? Like really, really loved? Will you hold me because you believe in me? Or will you hold me because you don’t want to let me go? Will I know what wholeness looks like?
October 18, 2023 I love who I am when I can feel safe being myself.
November 26, 2023 Something in that moment meant everything to me… I felt precious and adored but not tokenized… like something cherished, but past preservation.
To be loved is to be changed
because to love and cherish and adore can look like preserving and being overly careful and holding on with fear… but it can also look like taking something along for the ride, and experiencing wear, braving the elements and the test of time.
talyssa: i have been a mantle piece… and i thought that was love, and i was right for thinking that… it was / in its own way / but no more / i don’t wanna
kristina: yes / it is love and it does count / but it’s not the tactile kind of love that is sustainable
talyssa: it’s hard because the vocabulary that i want to use is associated with harm and hurt… / but to have scars / and like / to be weathered / to be loved through / this [desire path]
kristina: it makes me think of how in high school or at church in abstinence talks, they always used the visual of a paper heart and crumpled it up and said who would want this? keep it perfect.
talyssa: to be crumpled up in one go though is different than being crumpled up because you choose to put me in your pocket every day
There is a Love I am seeking that is unafraid of wear. So far, I have found it in my truest friendships where I feel comfortable being witnessed in every way; through my hurt and my stupidity and my happiness and everything in between. It is a patient love… because creating a desire path takes time and the conscious decision to show up over and over again. And I accept that many people might frown at the sight of a desire path… a scar through a perfect lawn. That’s ok. The desire path is nothing close to an obligation— it’s the opposite actually. Despite there being better ways, the desire path is formed because it is chosen. Over and over again, it is chosen. That is Love.
The woman is now a compact and light and a sharp one—
and heads through the iciness that, liquid, resists her, and yet lets her enter, as in love where resistance can be a secret request… She’s the lover who is fearless because she knows that she’ll have it all again. (An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures, Clarice Lispector, p. 66-67)
But I want to clarify hurt; it’s a matter of the heart and its tendency to contradict itself. I used to keep my heart wrapped tight in moleskin to bypass fear. Exclusivity— I decided— was protection, and I figured I would always know when and for whom I was supposed to unwrap it for. Ironically, it all made me more fearful and (unsurprisingly) lonely. With my heart under wraps, it was too easy for people to fall in love with an inauthentic version of me… a version I could create just for them. In this false security, my self could never be deemed unworthy. I avoided hurt with preemptive rejection. What if I gave you my whole heart only for you to decide you did not want it?
Oh, but you cannot know Love without the risk of hurt. You must enter the arena with an open chest cavity, a heart beating with foolish ferocity, and acceptance. You will be embarrassing and you will be large and you will be scary, but I promise you, you will be Loved. I know you will be Loved. And that Love will probably come from someone just as embarrassing and large and scary as you are and if you forget who you are, you might miss it. By allowing hurt to come and go without judgment, you’re reminded over and over again who you are. By the time Love finds you, it finds You.
It all comes back to the desire path… you’re seeing that, right?
patience choice consistency change adaptation evolution hurt resilience resistance detachment surrender confluence
December 1, 2023 I used to think showing up to love meant leaving the bad parts out. I thought it meant stripping down for a baptism and being reborn as the pure, happy, unwounded self that is always wanted and liked and reliable. Showing up to that kind of love (mantle love) was so easy. It made me so light and careless. Now think of the desire path. It is forged over time and not simple passive time, but consistent, active time. Repetitive friction between boot and earth. Over and over again. And it only gets a name when it’s taken a form. That is; form first, name later. That’s a desire path. Oh! That’s a desire path— not “I am going to make a desire path, we are now making a desire path.” And so what is this resistance I feel? The anticipation of consistency? Time… the prospect of making time. The radical idea that I am allowed to appreciate the view before I reach the top of the hill.