Our parents stay together for the kids a lot. My mami is in this relationship she finds herself resenting because she felt a sense of duty to us, her children, above any sense of duty to herself. My mami intended to do the very best by us by staying married but I am beginning to think that I may be more fucked up because of the things my mami did to shield us from seeing two people who once loved each other but then did not : split.
I am 30 years old and I have already a divorce under my belt. I cannot invest myself into a partnership that I can foresee as doomed, within any given timeframe. I have become a sorcerer, a fortuneteller, of lovelessness. I find myself so happy, in the moment, but knowing that all things end and love is one of those things. And I am not talking about LOVE the feelings, I am talking about Love the act of intentionally giving yourself to another person and seeing their flaws ALL OF THEIR FLAWS and keeping them around. That fades too. That grumpiness you used to find endearing, become tolerable in a few years, but by year 20 of marriage is feels like nails on a chalkboard.
I have become a fortuneteller of seeing those flaws, that at the beginning I am suppose to lie to myself to my partner about being able to love unconditionally till the end of time, and saying: nah. This is something I have to learn to talk myself out of, because in my parent's good intentions they taught me that love turns into convenience and then it turns into hate, and I do not have space for hate in my heart and I do not have space for hate in my lungs and I do not have space for hate in my soul.
I am currently in a relationship, my first real relationship since my separation and later divorce which all occurred in December 2013, and I find myself physically moving through the motions and physically loving and physically happy. But the minute I am left to my own devices, the minute I am left to think, I remember that his politics around politics of pigmentation do not measure up to mine, I remember that his impatience feels suffocating, I remember that we come from two different socio-economic backgrounds and this puts a hamper on the ways that we relate to capitalism and racism and basically all things that matter to me. I remember that we communicate differently and we value different things in our persona friendships and I begin to judge him based on his inner circles.
To love and to give yourself willingly to a bed of knives is not an easy task to re-learn when you have laid out and bled for this thing called love, and you barely made it out alive. To love and to give yourself willingly to your executioner is one of the terrifying acts that we as human beings have to do, and I am not entirely sure that many of us can do that more than once. We can pretend to do the thing, we can try our hardest to hold on and hope for the best but many of are just trying to keep ourselves together and stay above the water in the pool of love that everyone seems to buy into but nobody seems to stay in for too long.
Humankind is meant to be enjoyed, our very humanity thrives off of human contact and companionship but I feel like love is something that we have told ourselves, evolutionarily or not, that we need to do to keep humankind alive through some romanticized lens.
I understand these are the words of a cynic, but these are also the words of someone who saw her parents stay together till they both stopped recognizing themselves and one another. I just want to recognize myself when I turn 40, and 50, and 60. I want to love who I see, and not have to relinquish that for the idea of romantic love which seems to bring more despair to everyone I know around me.
I think I am just trying to love without drowning in it, because of it, or with it.