Running as fast as I can...
May. 8th, 2005 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quiregrrlI've been pondering love, loving someone, saying "I love you", the difference between like, lust, love and in love.... there's lots to ponder...
A while ago, cocobuttr was also pondering love, and wrote the following in her journal, as she says so eloquently what I hold true for me as well, I borrow it gratefully with permission..
"Love means so many different things to so many different people. I'm always a little worried about using it, even as I go ahead and do so anyway. When I tell you that I love you, I worry that you will think it means something different from what I think it means and maybe it will bother you. Love, to me, is a pure emotion: it means I care for you, you're special to me, you've touched my heart somehow and I want the best for you always. It means I hope to keep you in my life in whatever capacity Life has in store for us. It means I feel connected to you.
It doesn't necessarily mean I'm in love with you. (In love, yet another difficult-to-define term. Blah.) It doesn't necessarily mean I want to rearrange my life to revolve around you, or that I want to move to be with you, or that I want to make my life with you and have your babies. I'm not a U-Haul lesbian. It doesn't mean that if I love you more, I love someone else less. It doesn't even mean that I'm trolling for you to tell me you love me too. How I feel is independent of how you feel, and if you don't "love" me by your understanding of that word, I don't want you to diminish my feelings by looking pained and telling me that you don't feel the same. Just smile and give me a hug or something. My love simply means that I care for you, and it's unlikely that I'd make that leap without the sense that you care for me too."
See... if I love someone, mostly I tell them, but sometimes I worry that what is behind those words when I say them, and what happens in the head of the person who hears them are two different things... I worry sometimes that my overt affection, my need to touch and hug and stroke certain people, and then telling them I love them, will make them interpret different meaning from my actions and words than I intend... I worry they will think i am IN love with them, and I occassionally find myself being more reserved, or if not reserved, more conscious of what I am doing and saying, and that consciousness and wondering leads me to discomfort sometimes... and then I don't say "I love you" even when I want to, when it wants to be said... I think maybe I need to email those I love and let them know that like cocobuttr, when I say "I love you" it means that I have a great affection for you, you are special and precious to me, I am happy that you are in my life and I want to keep you there, and I want the very best for you in life...
In love is something different, most people would agree, but it's so hard to define... I have only been in love once, and at that time in my life, because of who I was at that time, where I was in my journey, and other things that were happening in my life, it became a clinging, desperate, cloying, overwhelming thing... and ultimately destructive. I am scared of being in love. Even though I am so very different now to then, my life is completely different, and my world is completely different, I am still afraid that if I let myself be in love it will be the same experience all over again... desperate, consuming, destructive. I don't know how to do "in love" so I run away from it...
there's more, but I am tired...
A while ago, cocobuttr was also pondering love, and wrote the following in her journal, as she says so eloquently what I hold true for me as well, I borrow it gratefully with permission..
"Love means so many different things to so many different people. I'm always a little worried about using it, even as I go ahead and do so anyway. When I tell you that I love you, I worry that you will think it means something different from what I think it means and maybe it will bother you. Love, to me, is a pure emotion: it means I care for you, you're special to me, you've touched my heart somehow and I want the best for you always. It means I hope to keep you in my life in whatever capacity Life has in store for us. It means I feel connected to you.
It doesn't necessarily mean I'm in love with you. (In love, yet another difficult-to-define term. Blah.) It doesn't necessarily mean I want to rearrange my life to revolve around you, or that I want to move to be with you, or that I want to make my life with you and have your babies. I'm not a U-Haul lesbian. It doesn't mean that if I love you more, I love someone else less. It doesn't even mean that I'm trolling for you to tell me you love me too. How I feel is independent of how you feel, and if you don't "love" me by your understanding of that word, I don't want you to diminish my feelings by looking pained and telling me that you don't feel the same. Just smile and give me a hug or something. My love simply means that I care for you, and it's unlikely that I'd make that leap without the sense that you care for me too."
See... if I love someone, mostly I tell them, but sometimes I worry that what is behind those words when I say them, and what happens in the head of the person who hears them are two different things... I worry sometimes that my overt affection, my need to touch and hug and stroke certain people, and then telling them I love them, will make them interpret different meaning from my actions and words than I intend... I worry they will think i am IN love with them, and I occassionally find myself being more reserved, or if not reserved, more conscious of what I am doing and saying, and that consciousness and wondering leads me to discomfort sometimes... and then I don't say "I love you" even when I want to, when it wants to be said... I think maybe I need to email those I love and let them know that like cocobuttr, when I say "I love you" it means that I have a great affection for you, you are special and precious to me, I am happy that you are in my life and I want to keep you there, and I want the very best for you in life...
In love is something different, most people would agree, but it's so hard to define... I have only been in love once, and at that time in my life, because of who I was at that time, where I was in my journey, and other things that were happening in my life, it became a clinging, desperate, cloying, overwhelming thing... and ultimately destructive. I am scared of being in love. Even though I am so very different now to then, my life is completely different, and my world is completely different, I am still afraid that if I let myself be in love it will be the same experience all over again... desperate, consuming, destructive. I don't know how to do "in love" so I run away from it...
there's more, but I am tired...
