find love

I think maybe I'm ready to find love.

Maybe I'm being a girl because I just watched a romantic comedy and now I'm having this thought.  Maybe I'm being unrealistic to be inspired by a movie, because maybe we make the stories in movies just a little better than they would happen in real life.

Half of me is extremely sure what love is, and the other half is pretty damn sure I haven't a clue how to begin.  See, in one sense, I experience love every single day.  My friend Stephan at work is so hilarious that I've got my hands over my mouth, trying not to laugh out loud.  I can exchange three lines via online chat with my dear friend David from Penn, and find myself saying "man, I love you, you know that?"  I receive texts from my mom, asking how setting up my new apartment is coming along.  I bond over really good beer, delicious blues dancing, and the way lindy hop is just that much better after a rum and coke.

But otherwise, I have given up for a long time now.  I relegated the couples I have been around as mysteries; I had spent so much mental effort some years back to define and understand love for myself, but to no real conclusions, and I do not have the energy to try anymore.  The discovery, the journey, the maintenance, the work through the downs for the sake of the ups -- these I see but from the outside, an observer trapped at the most surface level understanding.

It seems in my life that whenever "something" starts to happen with someone, it is unexpected: a string of occurrences that happened to weave together to bring that person into my life.  If that holds, then, I ask myself, what need do I have to learn to seek?  That means I have to wait, and hope.  But the few times in the recent past that I have hoped a bit, always something has held things back.  And so I haven't had the chance to see what might become.

My life is very filled right now.  Friends, family, and activities are all there for me and wonderful.  I'm living where I want to be, and I've got people who miss me in other cities.  And yet, it might be nice to have someone to think about at the end of the day, knowing he will be doing likewise.  It might be nice to hold hands and steal kisses.  To send pointless text messages.  To laugh so hard, and then have a deep conversation.  To share beer, and dinner, and ice cream.  To watch dumb TV and not care that it's dumb because it's extra cuddle time.  To while the hours of a Saturday, doing our own thing, taking simple peace and comfort in another's company. To miss, be missed; need, be needed.

To love, without wondering.

But you know, I'm just making this all up.  Because this is a little bit of how I like to imagine it would be.