Oh Flynn, Flynn, Flynn.
When will you learn?
Maybe some day? Maybe never.
I struggle with love. With feeling loved and with expressing love.
When people used to ask “what’s your type?” I used to give an honest answer, nowadays the response is “emotionally unavailable.” I’ve often found myself attached to people who couldn’t love me back. It’s happened far too often for it to be ‘coincidence.’ It feels like more of a personality trait. It’s one of the more self-destructive traits I have. I fully acknowledge that this is a me problem, not a ‘them’ problem. I put myself in that space knowing the potential repercussions. Maybe it’s subconscious? I see someone I think I can help, or someone I want to be around knowing I shouldn’t but doing it anyway. Maybe it’s a choice? Have I been choosing lose/lose situations? I like to think I’m smarter than that? I’m not sure that I am.
I’ve been thinking a lot about love these past few months. About my capacity to love and to feel loved. Or my lack thereof. At times it worries me. It worries me on both sides of the spectrum, the void I often feel in moments when you’d expect you should feel/express love, as well as the depths I can feel both love and lost-often simultaneously. Emotions are scary.
Feeling loved is strange for me. There’s a fine line. A tightrope that has to be walked for me to feel loved. Not suffocated, nor isolated; not needed, nor necessary, but loved. I’m fully aware that I run when people get too close and are too interested. I hate feeling like the person NEEDS me in their life, but I crave feeling like I’m wanted. Sometimes that puts me in difficult situations. But at the same time I’m not going to fight for someone to show an interest in me. I understand that’s counterproductive and that I’m a walking contradiction. But hey, that’s me.
People say you “fall in love.” That one moment it’s just there. I’d say it’s more of a stumble. That uneven pavement – I hope nobody saw that – kind of stumble. They did. Everybody saw it happening, everybody except for you. Oh but you fall, you fall out of love. You fall with all the grace of Jackie Chan in every movie he’s ever been in. Launched, unwillingly, from the fifth floor balcony hitting every doubt soaked rooftop and memory filled washing line on the way down.
Love is vulnerability. It’s being fully open to yourself and for someone else, knowing full well the potential repercussions. That’s terrifying. But the reward? The reward. The reward is something else. The reward is that whiff of the first summer bbq, it’s the salted sea breeze, it’s the intro to that song you haven’t heard in ages, it’s seeing the waiter bring your food when you’re starving. It’s all that and so much more. It’s clouded judgement. Clouded by optimism, hopes, dreams, what could be.
Love is turning your life’s brightness up to 101% instead of quivering in power saver mode. Yeah, you’ll spend weeks on end consumed by what could’ve been. You might never look at the colour yellow the same. Or maybe you might not be able to listen to your song again without flashbacks.
But maybe, just maybe, that’s worth the risk.
Love,
Flynn. Xo
Let's go on an adventure. 