I recently watched Chassé through EcstaticStatic’s latest programming. The film’s musings on love resonated deeply, particularly in this scene. I thought about my own heart lock and the processes I’ve been undertaking to liberate it. My mom and hairstylist are right: You can read, journal (privately or in this substack), or use Tarot to help understand where you must grow, but nothing compares to having someone listen to your thoughts, acknowledge your pain, and guide you along your journey. I’ve been unsuccessful in therapy, or, rather, in finding a therapist who I feel understands me and my desire to break free from the binds I’ve placed upon myself and that society has placed upon me. It’s funny because I can see the issues so clearly, it’s the choice to approach them in a new way that is difficult and confusing for me.
Settle for less, they say: true love is a fairy-tale. And we circle each other warily, our hearts clenched like fists around the fear of betrayal: we prefer starving alone, after awhile, to barely tasting a feast that can be snatched away from us without warning or that turns rotten after the first mouthful.1
I’ve been in love multiple times, but now I wonder if it was true love. I may have thought I felt love, but after all that I’ve come to understand about myself and my life path to this point in time, I wonder if it was real. In hindsight, I see the layers of protection I surrounded my own heart with, thinking a disguise would keep me safe from heartbreak.
Big surprise, it didn’t.
My issue with love is how it’s portrayed as the cornerstone of a successful life in the most heteronormative, formulaic way. Monogamy is a trap. The pressure of being that one person to another, to live up to their expectations of what your life together should be, projecting your own narratives onto them, expecting each other to know exactly what the other needs without clearly communicating it. It’s suffocating and unrealistic. As much as I am a romantic, I understand the complexities of relationships, especially erotic-romantic ones.
I don’t ever wanna change your mind / I wanna be with you the way that you are
In relationships, “it is better to let go of the other and be open to meet again and again.”2 Freedom within our own partnerships is crucial to learning how to deeply love. Sometimes, time apart gains perspective and appreciation of your beloved. To be clear, I’m not talking about on/off relationships that toxically keep each party in a holding pattern and refuse the evolution of their relationship and one another. I’m talking about a trust that becomes inherent in these intimate partnerships. Respecting each other’s need to be on their own, explore their own world, adapt and change as they see fit for their own life.
We have to free each other to be and become ourselves. This isn’t just about other lovers or sex partners or friends, it’s also about other undertakings, needs, even the desire for space and solitude—it’s heartbreaking how much of our selves our lovers often ask us to sacrifice to be with them.3
If you truly love someone it requires an understanding of non-ownership as well as a detachment from the idea that commitment equals imprisonment. To feel secure in a relationship where partners have separate lives, but can still share a beautiful life together—that’s the relationship I dream of. Romance and exploration with someone who wants the space and freedom to continue discovering themselves. Giving one another the space to fall in love with ourselves over and over again.
Referentiality is conceived as a temporal process in which the past is always receding, the present is momentary, and the future is a kind of mirror image of the past, a projection of auratic experience, otherwise known as desire.4
I’m not sure why I fight back against my inherently romantic nature. Protection, perhaps. I’ve given my heart to people who weren’t tender, who didn’t deserve to have access to it. But if I didn’t take those risks I would never know how to define love on my own terms.
Love is freedom—free from restraint and category. Love is that subterranean feeling of the ground moving below you, naturally spinning towards the future then cycling back to the beginning. Sometimes, we orbit energies in a cyclical way, returning to the center where we first encountered one another. But each time, we’re different. And if those differences continue to fuel the connection, pulling our souls closer to one another, then the process of unlocking yourself no longer feels impossible.
Michelson, Louis. Everyday Love the Last Refuge and the Last Closet of Desire!
Lushwala, Arkan. Time of the Black Jaguar. 144.
Russell, Catherine. Experimental Ethnography. 8