fool in love

I’d like to blame it on the impersonal vicissitudes of hormones, but I think the mewling truth is that I’m seriously in love.

I’ve written before about my profound ambivalence at being one of those happy, shiny loving couples. I have a lot experience at being one of those gaudy dramatic loving couples. I have performed being in love as if I were filing a W4 for it. I have held hands, stared meaningfully into eyes, and kissed passionately on street corners. I have flung drinks in restaurants and I have stormed self-righteously out of cafés. I have spoken in glowing terms to my mother about my man of the moment’s minutiae.

I have formally cohabitated with five men and informally with two more. I have said those three immemorial  words to those seven and also to about three other people I can think of off the top of my head, which means there’s probably one or two others whose memories I’m repressing. And though I’ve never been married, I have discussed marriage with five men and one woman. I even asked one man to marry me in  a giddy fit.

I have bought furniture with three men. I have owned a car with two and a motorcycle with one.

Hand in sweaty hand, I have brought eight men home to meet my parents. I myself have met the parents of six. I try not to meet parents. I don’t really do well with the parents. I go over all self-conscious and stiff. And no matter how Gidget I dress, parents almost always look at me and see the tawdry. The fathers work hard not to stare at my boobs. (They are fake, and they are spectacular.)

I have quite the love history, it feels like to me. For the last 29 years, since I was fifteen and had my first boyfriend, I have been surfing the crest of serial monogamy, though those waves were punctuated by many months of total inactivity, shorter spurts of hyperactivity, and even slimmer slices of time when I was “just dating around.” I have experience; I know what love is.

Or I thought I did.

Because lately, 29 years into my love life and two-and-a-quarter years into my relationship with Donny, I feel like I’m just beginning to find love. And it’s a weird, uncanny and beautiful thing.

A part of me continues to feel the white-knuckled clutch at my heart. A part of me continues to fear, to mistrust, to take each step with a tentative toe as onto black ice at night and without a moon. A part of me still wanders in my head and tries on guises of mistrust like ill-fitting outfits. Maybe he has another girlfriend on the side, I think. Maybe he’s still looking around online, I wonder. Maybe he doesn’t really love me, I consider.

A part of me continues to wait, mental toe going tap tap tap while anticipating some invisible shoe to drop, and drop with the sound of a starter’s pistol, wherein I am off like Marion Jones, down that track, knees pumping into oblivion, puffs of dust rising in my silent absence.

A part of me continues to feel all these palpitations of the anxious heart.

But a larger part of me does not.

The larger part of my heart isn’t palpitating all tachycardiac with fear. The larger part of my heart feels calm as a postcard sea, serene and sure, positively azure in its certitude that I can trust this man. That this man, unlike the other men, won’t abandon me. This man, unlike the other men, is gearing up for the long haul. This man, unlike the other men, believes in me in ways I can’t yet believe in myself.

It’s not like it’s all figured out yet. Donny has yet to ask me to marry him, but I have realized that he’s the one I want to marry, and I have communicated that thought to him, and he hasn’t run yet, so I am just trusting that so far, so good. Donny does still suffer the clutches of fear in his own heart. He spends insomniac nights tossing, marinating in anxiety, and he tells me about it, the sleep pilling his voice like a cheap sweater. It makes me nervous when he does, but then we talk and kiss and hold each other, and all again feels right with the world.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my ability to feel Donny’s love has a lot more to do with my burgeoning sense of relative mental health than it has to do with him. Which, ok, cool. It’s a payoff for the wretched hours I’ve spent week in and week out in therapy, which I hate, though I hate it less now that my life has gotten a bit better, a bit brighter, a bit more rosy.

With that embiggening relative mental health has grown too my capacity to love. And oh, sweet Aphrodite on a pita, I love this man. Some of the love continues to hop foot to foot, flapping its hands anxiously. Most of it, though, feels capacious and expanding, like a very sexy Buddha.

A while ago, I wrote that I felt I loved Donny so much that my heart would burst out my chest, like that pointy baby in Alien, and run screaming around the room. These days, I find my body has grown big enough to carry my love. It fills me; it vibrates; it hums; it sometimes even rattles me. But it is not too big for me.

Nor does it seem too big for him whom I love, my Donny. Go figure. It's a crazy-ass thing, love.

Comments

[figleaf]

"These days, I find my body has grown big enough to carry my love."

That's a pretty cool sentence in any language, Chelsea Girl. Glad you got to write it. Even more glad you have reason to. You're pretty cool.

figleaf

[efg]

Call me a freak... but the latest paean to your feelings about Donny cued the scene in West Side Story where Maria and Tony sing:

Today the minutes seem like hours. The hours go so slowly, And
still the sky is light. Oh moon, grow bright, And
make this endless day endless night, tonight!

[Jonathan]

You remind me so much of a girl I used to be inseperable with. You always had the sense with her that when her life was approaching some kind of normality, or even utopia, her hand would be reaching out for the self destruct button...

Good luck with everything... here's to peace, calmness, and being in love :)

[Tony]

Good on you girl. We should all be so lucky one day.

[S.P.]

Wow, Donny learns a new trick, and the next column is about being in love...

I'm teasing, of course!!! (ducking) It's all part of that big, unwieldy package we call a relationship, and like you/we attempted to tell Dear Reader last month, sexual satisfaction is critical to long-haul success -- so why SHOULDN'T today's blog be exactly as you wrote it!!!???

Sincere congrats -- now get to work on keeping that feeling alive and growing -- that's the hard part, but it's worth it!

(But we all hope it doesn't slow down your creative output!)

[KtotheE]

Being in love is the best thing I've ever seen, heard, or felt. Hang on tight to it, baby.

[Alanzo]

Hi CG...I am making a similiar discovery these recent days. I reflect on those past relationships and wonder why none of them had these very new very frightening edges??? I am hoping for you...

[VJ]

Aww That's sweet CG. I hope you get hitched. The later you wait, the fewer relations there will be to wrry about to! Cheers & Good Luck! 'VJ'

[Alice]

Wow Chelsea, this is such a beautiful and skillful piece of work. Congratulations on your new realizations, you are an inspiration.