Amorphous Love

Amorphous: without a clear or define shape

    Every once in a while, I climb up a really high mountain, or a high building, or even the edge of a cliff- and look out at what I see. Everything seem so clear from a distance, but because of that distance, many things aren't so clear either. Love is the same way sometimes. From a distance, I become absolutely sure that what I feel is love although I can't say exactly what is the target of that love. Without that distance, I know exactly what or who that target is, although I cannot say anymore if love is what I feel. Human emotions are tricky that way. I wish I knew but at the same time, Im glad I don't know. The fact that I am not sure now, allows me the confidence to be sure when I finally figure it out one day.

    I've realized something extraordinary about myself this year. My heart is so loyal and patient. Because it is so patient, I am one step closer to concluding that it is indeed love I felt years ago- at least what it knew love to be. My heart, it never wants to possess the object of its desires. It would rather wait while I'm out here figuring things out on late night dinner dates alone, and on early morning coffee breaks. The times when I'm alone in spaces that I'm typically expected to have friends or companions, I realize that my heart is still waiting. I don't feel the same sense of urgency or need that I see my friends feeling. I seem to always be at peace and my heart is simply content with the knowledge that it has always been honest and true. What is it waiting for? I do not know yet, but it is waiting peacefully. It's allowing me to feel everything I feel, with no rush. I guess I can say its re-assuring that my heart is this way. Its reassuring in the sense that whatever it is that happens at the end of waiting, I will be perfectly okay- because I have a heart like mine. 

    Every time I'm alone, I find myself thinking back to years ago- back to an old friend I thought I loved, a person who was and still is perfect to me, in every sense of the word. I tend to look for him in people I meet, people I talk to, and then one day, I realize that I actually do not know what it was exactly that I liked about him at that time. So I thought long and hard about it several times for a while, what did I actually like about him? Was it really "like" that I felt or was it simply just admiration? I did in fact, admired him, but I also loved the gentleness in his gaze, and the way that he's an introvert but every once in a while- he asserts himself in quiet ways one can easily overlook. Most of all, I loved how safe it was to like him. He took my feelings and instead of doing something with it, he let it be. In more ways than one, that's exactly what I wanted him to do: let things be. I wanted the closure of telling him without the pressure of expectations because quite frankly, I didn't really have any at that time. These days when I reflect back on that time, I think I didn't actually start to like him until I told him I did. Before then, I simply admired him and confused myself into thinking I liked him instead.

    My thoughts of him now always leads to a feeling of great appreciation, respect and even more admiration. He probably didn't realize then but he had every opportunity and means to hurt me, break my naive little high school heart, and change the way I saw the world and myself. Yet, he didn't. I gave, he accepted and we both allowed our lives to move on where it moved to from there. Because of that, my heart never feels any sense of urgency or need to long for people, and it never wants to possess what it holds affection for. My heart is now happiest when its free, free to love, free to feel, and then free to go. 

    He might have been my first love, but the truth is I don't exactly know what love for another person feels like. Yet, I can say that he might have been the one who taught my heart how to love a person. I only know a feeling of love for life, for the world, and for existing. I am well versed in distant love, patient love, a non-committal love, and an amorphous love- one that doesn't have a form in the way that the shape of wind is only such as I feel it in each moment. Yes, a love like the wind. 

    Life changes so suddenly all the time for me. When I calm myself in the center of these changes, I notice how drastic they are, how excited and curious I get about not knowing whats headed for me next. Its like being on a red eye flight in bad weather. I get a little scared, a little excited, but I'm relaxed still, because I know there is absolutely nothing I can do. The plane might crash or it might not. Either way, I am not in control. Such freedom. Most people hate it. I crave it- to lose myself in someone or something other than what I know and whats up to me; because even if it was up to me, most of the time- I just let things be.

    Sometimes I wish I was a bit more assertive. Maybe then, I could get the things I want. But that would be wrong. In the same way that my visions of the future is unclear, one thing is certain- my heart is only happy when it is free to love, and that is only possible when the people around me are just as free as I allow myself to be. That sense of freedom comes as a result of letting things fall into place. When I trust myself, I feel no need to own and control. I don't like control ironically. I like freedom- unexpected, un-calculated, and unbridled, freedom.

JVL