Love is hard; not in the someone’s stealing your duvet away from you all night sense, but more like constantly asking yourself, Can I stay the uncertainties? We're all experienced when it comes to love, relationship fanatic or not. That relationship to love forms our personalities and, in turn, affects how and who we invite into our lives. Who we invite in our lives, by proxy, shapes us and our ideas about love, and mine are layered with heavy coats of skepticism. Doubts. Love is for me a perfectionist zone, one of the areas my fear of failure overflows into. That looks like my inner radars spending the day scanning for evidence that it won’t work, that underneath the joy, there is the reality of unhappiness, that things could go terribly wrong, that love should be easy or nothing at all.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the theory field of love—watching speakers talk about lust, attraction, secrets for long-lasting partnerships; I’ve read books, asked couples about their stories, consulted mentors, all in service of feeling some sense of safety or understanding when it comes to love. But still, no guarantees, no certain answers. This scares me, abstract as it may be. I'm not Freud, I can't always soothe myself with the bigger picture. Recently, grabbed hold by the claws of a particularly rough day, I expressed to my partner that I was scared because I felt like I just couldn’t see the future, and no horoscope or crystal ball was going to help me get there. I genuinely meant it at that moment and only realized how ridiculous it sounded after the words came out of my mouth and echoed back to me. I don't think I’ve ever actually admitted to myself that controlling my environment and keeping my risk-taking at a minimum might lower my chances of getting hurt but would mainly just stifle my growth as a well-rounded woman.
I spent a large majority of my younger life in relationships and then a large majority of my later years out of them. When I decided that I wanted to be alone at 23, I was really alone—alone as in I didn’t have a partner to be by, to identify with, to feel safe with. Being my own primary partner became my new norm, and I felt that finding someone compatible with my lifestyle was like digging for gold. I was strongly intent on having the freedom to be so completely myself in a time when I also felt influenced by those I spent my time with. I was on a “get to know Anja on her own terms” mission for a long time. 7 years.
I can only assume that it was during that period of aloneness—fruitful as it was—that the skeptic in me outgrew my trust in love. Fear was optimal fuel for that. I was so careful and protected about entering any kind of relationship with anyone that I mostly just closed all doors to that intimate and erotic connection (modern) love provides. My will wanted a sense of certainty; it was my precautionary work, ensuring that heartache and loss and all the things that seem like love's fine print wouldn’t reach me, that I could bypass it.
And then that love arrived, but the fear didn't leave. And I have to accept that, that coexistence. Now acting as a home to all of my feelings, the love, the fear, the not-knowing, I’m reminded again and again that keeping myself closed off and in a perpetual state of afraidness or confusion serves nothing and no one, especially me. Sharing that and being honest with myself helps. No, I don’t know. Love is exciting and scary and, yes, like life itself—the unknown—and I’m embracing that more. Big risks for big joys.
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