Letters to Strangers

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I never really believed in love, at least not in the normal way. I knew I could love something. I knew I loved books, dogs, the endless botanical world. I always have - those things are just sort of like the wind to me, they've always been there, they've always pulled my hair away from my face and made me smile inside. They were always the comfort when things went awry like they often do.

Though I don't suppose it's entirely unnatural for me to be so subjective towards it. When you've been raised in a broken home, an alcoholic father, a mother who doesn't know what she's doing, and whatever-else-could-be-weird like that. I wish I could tell you all what I mean by that. I don't know if I'm just afraid, like I am for some reason, that telling people will make them think I'm less of a person, even though it isn't me. I don't take judgment easily. It's always been a weak spot. What I mean is, I guess, fate, destiny, this world, circumstance just doesn't work like that, and when you think of the worst, most impossibly imperfect family you can imagine, I hope you think of me and you think of this and you reconsider - even though you don't know what it is.

There are a lot of those sorts of situations, here. A lot of those - "GOD if only I could tell someone that." I could write a book. I could write an entire series. I could be the main character in a movie. I could. You know what it would take?

Scenes like this. Scenes where we're playing in tar. Where we're running from a boiling hot tub, across the snow, up a ladder, and jumping into a pool. Where I'm in socks and pajamas and I've gone out because it slushy and I want to ride my scooter in circles. Where I'm sleeping next to my brother. Crying into the arms of my sister until we eventually sob our way into selfless sleep. These scenes are not empty, no, they're filled with the worst fears, the terror, the boredom, they're filled with feeling, excitement, pain, sorrow, unbelievable happiness, unfathomably awkward situations, and the kind of frustration that can't be vented on a keyboard or by stabbing cardboard boxes, or by running around in the cold and stealing golf balls and falling into sand traps because it's too fucking dark to see anything at all but we're laughing even though all of our ankles are sprained and there's some crazy fat security guard lazily drifting by in a cart looking for us.

Is that what love is?

Is love sitting in the eternally unfinished tree house? Mixing found chemicals under the cement slab to make reactions that we could explain? Is it falling out of apple trees, or riding horses that weren't ours, or playing in the hayloft? Is love collecting grass and catnip and saying we'll be millionaires if only we had the time to make it into something real? Is it the cold when the fire goes out in the winter, or the fear when you've got no choice but to cut the neck off a rattlesnake or die?

I guess I've just never been able to know what love is. There are so many things it could be. What sort of love do you think, really, explains that? It's a certain type of love.

It's not the love that explains everything. It's not the kind that you feel walking barefoot and barely clothed down railroad tracks in the summer. It's not what you feel spray-painting the dull red train-cars bright orange with smiling faces and Shakespeare quotes and pretending we're classy and cultured before we go romp around in the swamp, in the snow, in the mud. Before we swim for hours and become sunburned and forget what's going on everywhere else because frankly, for fucksake, it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of it all.

That's a different kind of love. That's like stargazing and getting lost in the woods; like crowding up twenty-at-a-time on a couch until it breaks and snaps and we feel awkward and confused and suddenly all bail off and everyone is gone. It's making strange animals from packed snow, making igloos underneath playgound structures, it's discovering the glory of Chai tea from the cabaret in the summer when it's too hot to breathe.

There are other types of love. There are the types of love no one will ever master - forgiveness, understanding, complete wholeness of oneself. There are the loves that everyone has - forever love thy family, the inexcusable burden that you were given at birth, the challenges we were meant to face even if we get lost along the way.

But what of love - the bond between two humans, the eyes-dilating, heartbeat-quickening, goosefleshy feeling of it?
What of this love - the terror felt understanding someone you believed so hard in might die?
There is love, like holding hands and walking into the ocean.
There is love, like the warm touch on a dark night.
There is love, like the knife in the wall.
There is love, like the sinking feeling of the moon.
There is love, like the rush of rebellion.
There is love, like the ability to stand up for yourself.
There is love, like the unimaginable and absolutely unthinkable.
There is love.

And that is it.
There is love and love and love.

And it is cold. It is entirely cold. There is snow on the ground and even though the sun is shining it is cold. And there will be no New Years party this year just like there wasn't a Back to School Blues or a Christmas party or an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. And I'm alright with that. I'm alright with that because love, mine, my love, is with me, because he will be there. And we won't watch the count down. And we won't see fireworks. And we won't drink champagne. But we will sleep. And we will sleep wrapped in each others' arms and be happy with it. And we will see our friends, and they won't have stayed up either, because of surgeries or loneliness or just because this year has beaten the life out of everyone and even though we're so happy to see it gone, we don't want to make it feel bad by celebrating its' passing.