As someone who but a month ago envisioned herself as experiencing this Valentine’s Day a taken woman, I would be lying if I purported to be thrilled about the coming Monday. While most of my former grade-school classmates find themselves extoling over first-year marriages, parenthood, and home ownership, I find myself wanting to swear off love at the age of 26. It is likely that we have all been caught between relentless cycles of self-generated feedback loops which aim to blind us from our intended paths. Whether said feedback loops take form as a result of unrequited love or conditional reciprocity, I will not diminish the effect these experiences so tangibly have on our lives. Rather, for anyone in despair over another year spent "alone", I want to share with you a revelation of mine following the most recent failure in a seemingly endless string of disappointment.
I am the single most axiomatic subject of my existence. Everything I see, feel, touch, and hear is wholly dependent on my perception as a conscious being. Moreover, my individual atoms stamp a unique interpretation on the world in every interaction I have with it. Why then is it so easy for me to settle for anything less than what these claims suggest? I quite literally have the universe at my fingertips (and that's nothing trivial). Yes - I, you, and everyone we know are minute on the scale of an ever-expanding cosmos. But the ability to change the course of the unfolding of events is nothing to take lightly. With my every thought, action, and relation, I bare claim to the very fabric of the cosmos. With that being said, let me be candid. Although I stand by my claims of grandeur implicit in the act of Being itself, there is, too, a sense of humility I feel when I scale my finite pocket of existence to the vastness of everything. Here is where I come to a solution on how to carry myself in the face of doubt.
When I am lied to, betrayed, underestimated, or made to feel dispensable, it is the responsibility of I and I alone to be a partner to myself when all else has gone dark.
On a personal sentiment, I sat with anxiety for two weeks distracted from my goals, wondering how my intuition could have led me astray to believe so ardently an allusion. With blue-eyed gaze, he charmed me into a trust he did not earn. I quickly felt I could unload the weight of my world by just a fraction, and that he would be on the other side to catch me if I became unbalanced. Seemingly overnight, he went from asking to see me every day and introducing me to his friends, to ceasing to check in or remain curious about me. Worst of all, there I was making excuses to my inquiring friends for his inconsistency. I explained how his ex had reached out to him at the knowledge of the new girl in his life and, suddenly, the energy between him and I shifted entirely. Because he was honest about her reaching out and insisting I had nothing to worry about given how "terrible" she was, there I was allocating more trust to a near stranger than to my own judgement. The truth had been with me all along. I felt unvalued, deceived, and exploited. Yet this treatment of me by myself was nothing novel.
As humans, we have the unfortunate tendency to impute our calls to individuation onto others. The act of filling the holes in one's life with external substitution only allows for greater passing of time to compound consequences. It is nothing short of noble to look inward and expend the energy one so often (and frivolously) extends to others, to self. The art of harmoniously integrating self interest with selflessness is something I am still learning, as I seem to think in the height of emotion that the latter of the two is a more virtuous trait. I have come to find this as not so obvious. I truly believe each one of us has a fundamental call to action which subsumes all other emergent calls. And to relinquish that destiny, purpose, fate, or whatever you call it, at the hands of another human being as fallible as you, may be the greatest blunder of all.
So rather than to acquiesce to nihilistic interpretation of love this February 14th, I will be taking care of myself with a newfound sense of accountability. As if I were someone I was responsible for - because I am the sole person capable of doing so.. I often wonder if I set too high of a standard for what I want in a partner and if anything can ever suit me enough. But if there is something outside of myself to have that kind of pull in my life, it will maintain that essence without my having to make it that way. So until the day comes where that path aligns with my own, I look forward to learning myself more. To becoming braver. To tending to my curiosity of people and ideas., time and space, the Universe and its laws.
My way of imprinting on the world something greater than myself is through music -sonic, patterned language that makes you feel a thought. I hope for each and every one of you reading this that you find yours and listen to it. It - that thing that is true when all else is wiped away, say, and you are left without the people, things, and places you know and love. Finding It does two marvelous wonders. One, you learn to value what you do have. Two, you have a power greater than all the materialism in the world can provide. And with that power, you have the ability to not only overcome but to do more than your wildest dreams can imagine.
To go beyond mere existence and do Good may be the best kind of love one could experience. And to have a natural role in the timeline of everything, for that reverence, I am eternally grateful.