Love, and not the noble kind

If you know me personally, be warned, I care for societal niceties less and less. I know very well all which the human creature is capable of, and how normal it all is. If you wish to know me only to some polite degree than watch your step around here. I have no secrets and a swiftly decreasing will to protect you from all the distracting superstitions and hang-ups you don’t know you have.

The earliest years I can remember, so significantly developmental, were marked by a mother who loved me fiercely and outwardly, and the vague knowledge of some father who was not present. So get a little Freudian about it and it’s no wonder that the simpler, directional love (in essence sexual, not enlightened) which I have experienced in life, runs in a consistent pattern. It is fierce, outward (honest with little ability to hold back) and it is paternal in nature. I always desire to be some kind of nurturer, perhaps so as if to fix my own childhood in a sense, by becoming the father I once lacked, to a surrogate me. This is just a theory and not a terribly relevant one perhaps. But it would explain why my adored have generally been younger and why I only ever wish to love and not really to be loved.

It’s hard for me to know how rare this is or not; this wish to love with cooperation but without reciprocation. Not that I wish to be used, exactly. Being appreciated is fine, and being needed is great. And being loved is okay, I suppose, just unnecessary.

I’ve never experienced my ideal romantic relationship. I’ve experienced isolated components of it here and there, and sometimes (long ago) in the opposite role - being the adored and not the adorer - which sounds weird perhaps, because it sounds like the polar opposite of what I desire. But sometimes it feels better to play the totally wrong role, and at least get to experience the tableau, rather than sit on the sidelines altogether.  The sad thing is that there was a time in my life where I had the capacity to create that ideal relationship but it passed while I was busy being normal because I had no vision or self-awareness to speak of.

My deepest romantic loves have always been, arguably, exercises in infatuation; almost entirely one-sided, and each manifestation has been different; each one marked by significant improvement over the last. By improvement I mean that I have learned from my mistakes. I have evolved with each occurrence. I have learned to handle these difficult and often painful circumstances with more and more honesty, peacefulness and wisdom.

With each affair-of-sorts I feel less jeopardy. And with the apparent closure of each, the love I feel has never died; just become more manageable.

What I find interesting, and I apologize for taking so long to get around to it, is the issue of trust. With each of these experiences I have become more trustworthy and also more trusting. I have, it seems to me, evolved to the point of being completely trustworthy and completely trusting; the reasons for each being of two different natures.

To take a somewhat indulgent short-cut, I am trustworthy because of my lack of fears and my capacity for integrity, both of which stem from a largely successful experience with the poetic process, likely along with a couple other reasons not occurring to me at this moment.

Why I am so trusting is more interesting. Possibly it has to do with the lack of fears but primarily it is an addictive behaviour alike the love itself. This is a bit tricky but let me try to navigate this: It’s not a conscious decision to trust completely. It’s a celebration of love; a kind of gift. It’s trust without trust being earned necessarily  A kind of romantic notion. “Here. I trust you. I open up to you and thus grant you the power either to protect me or to hurt me. I throw myself at your mercy.” It is the notion that this person is so special that they surely must be worthy of trust. It's faith I suppose.

This does not mean that all the trust I give is without justification. Sometimes the beloved really is special enough that they are worthy of all the trust. The point is that they don’t need to be. They’ll receive it regardless.