me and love are still strangers

i haven't talked about love in a while, not because I found it, not because I hate it, but because i think my feelings got tired of trying to understand it. this episode is about love, betrayal, friendship, romance, mariah the scientist, and realizing that sometimes the people who say they care about you can still be the ones holding the knife...

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Transcript

I haven't talked about love in a while.

And it's not because I found it.

It's not because I don't care about it.

It's not because I'm above it now, because i'm still yearning.

I think I just got tired.

Not tired of love itself, but tired of trying to understand it. 

Tired of trying to figure out why something that's supposed to feel soft can also feel like survival. Tired of hearing people say they love you while their actions make you question if they even like you.

And maybe that's dramatic, but honestly... maybe it's me.

Love has always felt like this thing I'm supposed to know. Like everyone is born with an instruction manual except me. People talk about love like it's easy to recognize, easy to keep, easy to trust. But for me, love has always felt like a language I can read but can't fully speak.

Me and love have known each other for years, and somehow, we are still strangers.

When I was younger, I thought love was simple. Like addition and subtraction. You love me, I love you. You care about me, I care about you. You don't hurt the people you love, and if you do, you stop once they tell you it hurts.

Simple, right?

But then you get older and realize love is not always black and white. Sometimes love comes with conditions. Sometimes love comes with guilt. Sometimes love looks like someone saying they care about you while repeatedly doing the one thing you begged them not to do.

And that's when love starts feeling less like comfort and more like confusion.

My first understanding of love came from family, of course. Parents, my childhood home, all of that.

But even then, I think I learned early that love can exist and still not feel safe. That somebody can provide for you, know you, be close to you, and still not always know how to hold you emotionally.

And I think that shaped the way I see everything else.

Friendships. Relationships. Situationships. Whatever we calling emotional terrorism.

I think one of the hardest realizations in any relationship, romantic or platonic, is realizing somebody doesn't care about your pain the way you thought they did.

Not because they made one mistake.

We all make mistakes. We all say the wrong thing. We all have moments where we're selfish, immature, defensive, or just not thinking.

But what happens when you tell someone, "This hurts me," and they keep doing it?

What happens when you explain yourself over and over again, trying not to sound crazy, trying not to sound needy, trying not to sound like you're asking for too much, and they still make the same choice?

At that point, it stops feeling like a misunderstanding.

It starts feeling like information.

Because now you know. You know this hurts me. You know this makes me feel small. You know this makes me question myself. You know this makes me feel disposable. And you still do it.

That's the part that changes you.

Because to them, it might be minor.

To them, it might be "not that deep."

But to me? It's dire.

It's another little cut in the same place. And after a while, the wound doesn't even get a chance to close. It just becomes part of how you move.

And I think that's why I love Mariah the Scientist so much.

It's something about the way she writes pain.  Sometimes it sounds like she's floating through the same thing that's drowning her.

And I get that.

 Some pain is sitting there realizing,

"Wow, you really had the choice not to hurt me, and you still did."

That's a different kind of heartbreak.

It's "you watched me become a smaller version of myself trying to make room for you."

It's "you knew what this was doing to me."

It's "I kept handing you the map to my heart and you kept acting lost."

And there's something so emotionally poetic about that kind of pain. Not poetic as in beautiful in a romantic way, but poetic as in tragic. Like, wow, this really altered me. This really changed the way I trust people. This really made me rehearse being detached before I even wanted to be.

I think sometimes people want access to you more than they want responsibility for you.

They want your softness.

They want your humor.

They want your attention.

They want your forgiveness.

They want your emotional availability.

But they don't want to be careful with you.

And I think that's where i get stuck. Because someone can enjoy you and still not value you. Someone can like how you make them feel and still not care enough to stop hurting you.

That's nasty work, by the way. 

But seriously, that's where it gets confusing. Because you start thinking, "Well, if they didn't care, why are they still here?" But sometimes people stay because you benefit them, not because they love you properly.

And that's a hard pill to swallow.

Because sometimes the proof that somebody doesn't love you right isn't them leaving.

It's them staying and still refusing to change.

It's crazy to feel like someone loves you while they're hurting you at the same time.

It's crazy to want somebody near your heart while they're holding the thing that could destroy it.

And that's what makes love taboo for me. Not because I don't want it. I do. I think I have so much love in me, it actually scares me. But I don't always know where to put it.

I don't know where it's safe.

Because every time I've put love somewhere, it felt like I had to lose a piece of myself to keep it there.

And after a while, you start asking yourself:

Is this love, or am I just good at enduring pain?

Because some of us don't know if we're loyal or traumatized. We don't know if we're patient or scared to let go. We don't know if we're forgiving or just used to people disappointing us.

And that's why I always say I want a nerd or a geek and I don't mean that in a shady way.

I mean I want someone passionate.

Someone who cares about something deeply. Someone who can talk about what they love with

their whole chest. Someone who doesn't act like caring is embarrassing. Someone who understands intensity, because I think I've spent so much of my life feeling like I'm too much.

Too emotional.

Too sensitive.

Too observant.

Too deep.

Too dramatic.

Too affected.

And then at the same time, I feel so small in the world.

Isn't that funny? To feel like you're too much and not enough at the same time?

That's why love is so complicated for me. Because I want to be seen, but I'm scared of what people do once they see me. I want to be loved, but I don't want to be studied, mishandled, or turned into somebody's emotional experiment.

I don't want another lesson.

I want softness.

Maybe love isn't the problem.

Maybe the problem is that a lot of people want love without the discipline of care.

Because love is not just saying it. Love is not just missing somebody. Love is not just posting them, texting them, claiming them, or having history with them.

Love is behavior.

Love is adjustment.

Love is hearing "this hurts me" and not needing to be told fifteen more times.

Love is not making somebody beg you to stop bleeding them.

And maybe that's why me and love still feel like strangers. Because I've met a lot of things that called themselves love, but I don't know if I've met the version that feels safe yet.

But I still believe in it.

Annoyingly.

Like, unfortunately, I'm still a lover boy.

I still believe there's a version of love that doesn't require me to betray myself. I still believe there's a version of love where I don't have to shrink, decode, beg, or survive.

I just don't know if I've touched it yet.

And maybe that's okay.

Maybe this episode isn't me saying I don't believe in love.

Maybe it's me saying I'm still trying to recognize it without confusing it for pain.

And maybe, just maybe...

me and love are still strangers.