I dare you to let the hammer of love smash open your heart.
___
Love is the child of an endless war
Love is an open wound still raw
Love is a shameless banner unfurled
Love’s an explosion,
Love is the fire at the end of the world
Love is a violent star A tide of destruction
Love is an angry scar
The pain of instruction
Love is a violation, a mutilation, capitulation, love is annihilation.
—Sting, Inside
___
Love. I asked for it. Begged, even. It turns out the Universe has a twisted sense of generosity.
I allowed myself to be more vulnerable than ever and in the painful aftermath the stone encasing my heart cracked open with a thunderclap. It was the sweetest agony. It still is. Absence’s wind creates a haunting howl in the rift now. Blood gushes out in an aching rhythm.
I’m broke open. Wide.
Part of me screams to smooth cement over the fissure. Don’t. Let it bleed. Let it bleed, a deeper part of me commands. Let your heart bleed.
◊♦◊
I’m confused. Do I know what love is? Did I finally feel it? Some are skeptical, they say I didn’t, that it wasn’t love. It was too fast, too volatile, irrational. It was attention, misdirection. Folly.
Did I mistake lust and infatuation for love? Would my heart hurt this much if that were so? Can there be any surety with where I’ve placed my heart now? Will there ever be?
This is what happens when you wait until 46 to place your heart on the anvil of life. My heart is a naive child and admitting that as a grown man is humiliating. Shame tells me I should have my shit together, that by now I should know love’s distinct feel.
It doesn’t help that I’m horrible at taking advice. Most of me thinks it’s actually blessing.
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Who’s to say what love is or isn’t? If existence is infinite, if our minds are infinite, why not love?
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Who’s to say what love is or isn’t? If existence is infinite, if our minds are infinite, why not love? It’s like trying to catch a butterfly though. It’s beautiful, but delicate. Its flight path unpredictable, but weirdly graceful. Grasping hands can crush its wings.
Or worse, it can be swatted, mistaken for a wasp.
In the afterglow of hurt, the temptation is selfishness. I could bitterly choose to think, fuck it, I’m getting my needs met and I’m not answering to anyone. I’ve been given advice to do that very thing and it rubs me wrong something fierce. It’s destructive. There’s no honor in it, only the pain of emptiness.
It’s control through omission. A coward’s approach.
Better to let love be and land on you if it wishes. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Maybe just for a bit, maybe for a longer while. And maybe that’s it, our finite lives and concepts struggle with infinite love because endlessness is terrifying. There’s no boundary and that’s when fear makes us retreat to the seductive comfort of binary thinking.
◊♦◊
I assumed I’d go back to love’s purgatory for another extended visit after my heart was torn asunder. But that’s not what happened and it has caught me off guard. Abandonment is something always scratching the back of my mind and the anticipation of loss keeps me on the defensive.
If I don’t try to catch love, control it, own it, define it, what then? That’s where I am. What a strange place.
Maybe being cracked open and refusing to withdraw has given me the ability to grow and experience love beyond my fear’s limits.
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Later, I asked her to tie me up. Naked, with my hands and feet bound together behind me, in that moment of pure vulnerability, my heart cracked open even more.
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That’s what a woman proposed recently as we sat soaking in the bathtub together. Later, I asked her to tie me up. Naked, with my hands and feet bound together behind me, in that moment of pure vulnerability, my heart cracked open even more. My tears soaked the bedsheets, my voice choked with release.
The experience was utterly unexpected. What the fuck was that, I thought. Am I sad? No. Hurt? No. Scared? No. Happy? Not exactly. She untied and kissed me as I processed silently.
When I had calmed down my thoughts were clearer. I’m relieved. At peace. Free. That’s what I’m feeling.
I was free of control’s chains. I was free of my constructed soul cage and no harm came of it.
◊♦◊
Love is messy and I’m sure I’ll stumble again. The key is explore it authentically, openly, and do no harm.
Can you do the same?
Say I don’t look much like a lover
Doesn’t mean that I won’t try
To set your world on fire every once in awhile
We lie on the kitchen floor
Hot air rises and it’s going to be hot as hell here soon
We are going to need some relief
Sick of leaving things half done, leaving things half said
Sick of leaving things half done, leaving things half said
Oh
I am
I am trying
The best that I can
I am I am trying
—Vance Joy, Best That I Can
Photo Credit: Chris OBrien
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