Love, such a common thing, yet we tip-toe around it as if it was the end of the world -or the beginning.
I blame Disney and Hollywood, no.
I blame romance books, no.
I blame the patriarchy, I blame binary gender norms, I blame society.
You and I are the same, and the feeling of love is fundamentally the same, yet here we are, giving it a thousand different meanings:
The love you feel for your sibling is different than the one you feel for your best friend, it's different than the one you feel for your child and it is extremely different than the one you feel for your partner.
You have to wait until it is appropriate to say it, you have to be "certain" of what you feel, and you can't take it back unless things are over.
How come so little words have such an important role in this whole thing?
We are the same, I'm coming back to that part.
Him and me and you and they.
I love my sister, I love my nieces, I love my friends, some more some less, but I do feel love when I am with them, when I think of them. I feel a light warmth filling up my chest, sometimes it's big and desperate, sometimes it's calm and grounding, sometimes it's overwhelming and I feel like drowning in it. Sometimes it shows up when I don't want it to be and I need some space, some air, as I wonder why in anger.
Why would I be angry at feeling such a nice fire within?
Revolution is love too, solidarity and union bring me love, a big one, overwhelming only because of the pain of the political situation of society, but when I am in the middle of a crowd who is fighting for freedom, for equality, for dignity... I feel the fire rising from the middle of my chest, filling up my words as I sing in unison with all of you.
I just keep asking, why is love such a terrifying thing?
And I still blame Disney and Hollywood for making us believe that we are supposed to be struck by love, turning our partners into the most important being in our lives and tricking us into making them the answer to all our problems.
I still blame romance novels for presenting suffering as part of love, sacrificing yourself for love is the ultimate proof of it, being self-less is the goal and if you're not, then it isn't love.
I still blame the patriarchy for making assigned female at birth people seem mysterious and incomprehensible beings, almost alien. And for things like "you must love them not understand them", instead of saying: "talk about it, listen to them, ask questions until you understand".
I still blame binary gender ideas for creating boundaries, presenting ways in which it is appropriate to behave around love when you are a or b, for brain-washing us into feeling our feelings and doubting how to react to them, being ashamed of feeling love, bottling it up and playing cool.
I still blame society for telling us what is right and wrong when we should be deciding that on our own when it comes to our own feelings. Society should have our backs, teaching us about feelings in a non-judgmental manner, teaching us that, however we are, however we feel, we are enough, our feelings are valid and holding up space for them, and us to learn, through experiencing and mimicking healthy ways of reacting to them.
I blame us too, right now, for not talking enough about this, for not exploring and deciding for ourselves, for not daring to change the paradigm, for not deconstructing it like we are doing with so many other things.
So here, let's open the talk:
I love, do you?