Love is a durable inconvenience. It doesn’t budge, not even when I will it far, far away in anger or sadness.
It has been nearly fifteen years since my wedding day. Since then, and even before, love openly and notoriously squatted in my home and on my chest and I can’t evict it. My husband’s love makes him kind to me and patient. My love keeps me ready to slaughter anyone who so much as frowns in his direction. Love is not annoying, it might even be delightful, when I can peek and poke at it at my leisure. I like love most when I can flex it like one of my own muscles.
But, more often, it causes great trouble because it peeks and pokes at me when I want to be left alone. I dislike love most when it uses me as its whole body. Not always but far from never, love compels me to secure someone else’s happiness over my own. Only then, only when I’ve run through its gauntlet, I can be happy too. This is very annoying.
In movies, love is a gushing waterfall. It is powerful and always fresh, slippery and dangerous, immovable. It doesn’t matter where it starts or where it ends, because we keep our eyes on the humming cascade and we decide that the graceful, effortless fall is the only part that matters. This is not love. I know love very well and, I swear to you, it is not a waterfall. Love doesn’t look at all like its movie star depiction, any more than Frank Abagnale looks like Leonardo DiCaprio. Infatuation might be a waterfall, or maybe obsession is a waterfall, but certainly, surely love is not a waterfall.
Love is a cup of water. Left out on the kitchen counter, unbothered, it will get stale, but it won’t go anywhere. It will collect dust and gross things will fall into it. It will leave a chalky ring in the glass, marking its face like an annoying messy ghost. It will evaporate a little, diminish one tiny molecule here and there, but that damn cup of water will stay right where it is, in the way of everything and overlooked. When someone needs a drink, when someone in my home, in my heart, has thirst, I pour out the old water, wash the glass, pour filtered, clean, clear water back into it, and set it back down on the counter for them to drink. It will sit there again after my loved one has sipped or gulped as much as they need. It will be silent, growing more funky, needing more attention before it can be useful again.
My problem with love is that, sometimes, I don’t want to bother with the glass. Sometimes, I want my thirsty loved one to have clean water without the work on my part. I’d rather drink my wine. Or maybe I’d rather be in bed. Or what if I want to move to Nice and forget about it all, where I’ll pucker my lips embarrassingly to pronouce tasse d’eau? That lint-filled glass of water leaves me no room to float away.
I’ve tried really hard to clear my counters, but I get thirsty myself. Often, someone I love is thirsty and that glass, that stupid, annoying glass that I’ve put away a million times is back on the counter. Even if I shattered every glass I own, even if I demolished my entire kitchen so there was no sink, no counter, it would make no difference. Because if my sister is thirsty, and I had nothing else, I would disinfect a rubber boot and fill it with the crisp water that falls off the leaves of mountain top trees. I would cup my hands together and run back from a waterfall to give her every drop I could hold on to. I would do this as many times as it takes until she is not thirsty any more. And then I can be happy.
Love is a cup of water because, even if it is not there yet, if I don’t want it to be there, if it has no place to be, it will be.
I don’t love love. I don’t even like it. I feel the same way about sleep and many other things about my human condition. I wish I could control these things. I wish I could conjure up a glass of water anywhere, in any condition, in an instant whenever I want with a snap like a genie. No one I love would ever be thirsty again, ever, ever. I’d really love that.