quit outsourcing love

Dear Amal, Episode 7: on perfect men, altars, and self love

Dear Amal,

I really just want a hot sweet guy to show interest in me and want to get to know me, I want him to prove me wrong about my outside facade and accept I am vulnerable and sensitive and want to be pampered and given princess treatment… but that hot sweet guy requires me to actually go outside and meet one but that’s uncomfortable and makes me anxious so I convince myself to stay at home and to focus on task to task things until someone comes to break the cycle…but that would require a man that reads minds but men are below average at best so it’s a miracle if they even know to bring flowers on a date. Yeah that was a rant. Sorry. I’m high. Love you. Hope to hear from you soon

Danni

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My dearest Danni,

I found this letter of yours amongst my drafts, not forgotten per se, but awaiting a good thought to come to me - at least an inkling of advice. Maybe I had some living to do before that could happen, maybe the universe wanted me to wait until the perfect time to respond, but most probably I am right there with you, with a heart that wants and a body that curls into itself. Regardless, do accept my apologies. Sometimes the words need time to come to me.

I’ve been searching for inspiration to write about love for love day, and your “rant” lit somewhat of a light in my mind - not a particularly strong one, but enough to get me going.

Well, here we are. Me, I’m here in Amman hundreds of miles away. And you, on the other side of the world, doing whatever you’re doing… once we were best friends walking along the grass field of our highschool, mostly talking of love. It had been so simple, then, our days, the intricacies of our lives, the things we worried about. You were also my first pen-pal, and going back to the emails we sent back and forth, I notice that our conversations were dominated by relationship-talk. It’s to interesting; life is truly circular.

Now we are adults, real, alive, and required of, and though we tried, we weren’t able to bring our young loves with us to relieve us of the stress of search. I wonder if that’s why we were so desperate then: because we didn’t want to be desperate now.

February 14th has always been a tricky day for me: I’ve almost never spent it single, but always spent it alone and waiting. This act of inaction has affected me deeply: watching the celebrations move on without me, and just hoping. Wishing. Foaming at the mouth, longing.

I sat and I waited. I’ve spent so much of my life waiting.

I know too well the resentment of wishing the universe would send me a mind-reader. I’ve spent too many Valentines Day’s waiting for my partner to know that I wanted that picturesque grand gesture, the reassurance of being remembered and honored. But eyes on my lover as he navigates the world, I’ve been realizing these past few months that people love in different, confusing ways, and maybe one of the biggest pitfalls is that we assume everyone loves just like us. It’s a repeated idea, but in repetition there is truth.

Listen, Danni, there is no answer for the anxiety: the world is loud, and uncomfortable, and mostly disappointing. I lose myself in the survival mechanism of staying home and cleaning the bathroom instead of going out and meeting some new people, too. I may be betrothed, but the fact is that a relationship doesn’t heal that hole in your heart, the one oh so desperate for fullness, for foreverness. If it’s not a partner disappointing us it is friends, if not it is family, and all this disappointment comes from within, I swear.

Don’t outsource love. Let it come straight from you. Let it eat you, you, no one else.

We are meant to love others, and will, and we do, but we get so caught up in it. All things end. We will die alone, and that should be inspiration enough to get going and start caring for ourselves. When you are your own temple of love, you stop counting the people who come to worship. You are the altar itself, who cares who visits?

I think we struggle so much with love because we struggle so much with endings. And even love is a series of ending and beginning, even the loves that last a lifetime. Us, too, no? Our relationship has started and ended many times; we fall in touch and fall back out of it again. What I’m working on, and maybe you should too, is becoming more self-sufficient: reminding myself that the most important relationship I have is to myself.

I don’t think the cycle breaks with someone showing up by your doorstep, tearing your walls down, accepting every little thing wrong with you, inspiring you to be who you are. I think it breaks when you take the step outside, everyday a little more prouder of that sensitive and vulnerable self you hide under those layers of fear. The facade is what’s killing you, my love. I think accepting the tender part of you, relishing in it, is the way to go.

It’s slow-moving for me but has proved successful. My vulnerability and sensitivity are constant culprits for disappointment, forever-causes of my relationships exploding around me. The blood always splatters in my face. It’s fucking horrible. But! And this is the truth: I have experienced more good than bad in honesty: every time I feel cut open, I remind myself that the more I go through this, the less affected I will be, and, pivotally, that the sooner I am disappointed with someone, the sooner I can move on to people that won’t disappoint.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:01 PM, you wrote to me: “You deserve to be happy without all these heavy emotions weighting down on your shoulders. Once you grow from this, things will align for you. I just know it! You’ll be loved and appreciated someday by the perfect guy, and no one knows who that’ll be.” I want you to take this advice for yourself, today.

Life is breathing in and out, too, you know, just like us. It is readjusting to every little change in our actions and demeanors, every choice can begin something brand new, something fast-moving. The founder of IBM once said, "If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate."

If you want to find love, start loving.

With love,
Amal

PS: Find below a list of rituals I have been doing these past two Valentines days. Rituals are self-preserving acts of love and devotion; start looking forward to things you can give yourself rather than waiting to be given to.

Run a bath, one of the most romantic things ever. I like to add lavender oil, Himalayan salt, rose petals, and eucalyptus. Bonus points if you bought yourself a bouquet and used some of it to infuse. Turn off your phone. Under the candle-light and slow music, watch your body.

When you’re getting bored, go to romantic devotions: read the work of writers that remind you of the simple pleasures of life. Think Mary Oliver and E.E Cummings.

Write to yourself, naked and lightheaded and rose-cheeked from the 30-minutes in the bathtub. Write about what you love about yourself, write about what you know others love about you.

Devour something sweet. Treat yourself to chocolate, cinnamon rolls, whatever it is that feels good on your tongue.

Come back to yourself, again and again, renounce the idea that someone must do it for you.

for valentine's day, i attended my funeral