Nineteen – Love

In which our Hero is sorely tex’t on Love and its occasional byproducts

The text from Willow came late in the night: “Can you and Nocturne make babies sooner rather than later?”

Well, that’s rather curiously specific interest in my relationship but thank you for the vote of confidence, I guess. To Willow, I offered to raise the issue but promised nothing as it’s not really entirely up to me.

But from there we started talking about love. Actually, we started talking about talking about love. She’s feeling very concerned that she has a hard time saying it and I tried to explain to her that she’s nowhere near broken and actually very much normal in finding it not something she shares so commonly.

Willow asked me how often I tell Nocturne that I love her. Her question showed me that I felt very shy about admitting just how much affection I feel for Nocturne, so I told Willow “once a day,” on the theory that it at least gives her a relatively honest reference point. (Her own emotions should guide how she handles her own situations.)

Then she started talking about that tired old cliche about telling people you love them because you’ll regret it if something happens later. Her issue is that she feels she’s failing by this measure. But that argument kind of bothers me because I think words obscure the more important semantics that everybody supposedly knows but then why does this phrase continue as it does. Don’t tell people you love them because you’ll regret not doing so later. Tell someone you love them because you love them. And I know that they are meant to be the same action but one is about you and the other is about the person you love and if the point is about love then I think you need to be loving even in this little context.

“Would Nocturne know even if you skipped a couple days and didn’t tell her? Or if you forgot?” Yes. She’d know. But at the same time… just because she’d know is a silly reason not to tell her. I love her and telling her just kind of happens. Telling her is part of loving her. Sharing affection is part of caring. Though sometimes things get busy and life interrupts and you don’t get the chance or the time to do the same things… that’s normal, that’s why people talk about the honeymoon period in relationships.

But that got me thinking. This is another choice of self definition. This is a chance to make myself the person I am. To redefine myself by changing the words. Instead of “no problem” I’ve taught myself to say “you’re welcome” which leads very honestly sometimes to “my pleasure.” And maybe being loving is also something that can be shaped like that.

Maybe instead of thinking of myself as being bad at staying in touch with people, I need to think of the people I want to be in touch with and reflect on the fact that I love them. I’m neglecting people I care for, when all it takes is a phone call or an email. That’s just… sad.

And maybe… maybe instead of accepting that honeymoon fading thing, maybe that’s something that can be challenged? Because life will happen, work and family and plans and commitments and random stuff, but… if I still love her why should I let that get in the way of telling her so? Or rather, maybe in addition to accepting that life happens, I can just accept that sometimes I need to flex but other than that, I don’t *have* to just let life eclipse how I care for people.

The part that bothers me is that it seems like this is an older epiphany that I misplaced. Have I been here before? I don’t know. But the clarity of the insight is already fading, and again life is kind of pushing and creating reasons-which-aren’t-remotely-like-excuses. So it seems that the challenge is to learn how to find a momentum.

Or something. Holy crap, this is incoherent. Let me powerpointify this mess:

• Babies!
• I love Nocturne!
• Momentum!
• Incoherent!