On Love

I make choices. I could say we make choices which are obvious really but I will stick with what I know as well as I can.
I made a choice to love, to love one particular human, one woman. All sorts of thoughts, feelings, emotions and experiences get stirred up and mixed together till one says to oneself “I love” and then to risk saying to that special other “I love you”. There, at that point I have made a choice to love; have someone to love and to express that love. If one is favored then one gets loved back.

So there I am in love, maybe loved back or not. In many ways, reciprocity is not so important as it may seem. So far there’s an implication that I can choose not to be in love. I could make that statement. I’m left with all the thoughts, feelings, experiences and emotions to unravel. Historically I can’t deny them. I have to falsify them or devalue them wholly, completely in order to make my new choice not to love this particular person. A reality for me here and now; in the present.

A big chunk of all the above is dispassionate even though emotions are involved. Homo sapiens are not so simple. We have egos, in-built irrationalities,desires,cravings,beliefs,self-justifications etc. All of which can also become enmeshed in how I make the choice to be or not to be, or as in this case to am or not to am.

Growing older I have more opportunity more experience to undertake that first of all dictates “First Know Thy Self”.
Age should not allow me to fudge this.

I have been in love and chosen to be in love. Hormonally my adolescence through to early manhood was littered with one or two which to my detriment were silent. never voiced. Then later, as a young man it happened as above, was reciprocated, and marriage ensued. I was happy with my choice and in life.

So here enter other factors. We make other choices not directly about love but that can affect love. If those choices are made collectively then there shouldn’t be too much of a problem. But the sum of choices made can grow to clash and can appear to become greater or detrimental to that earlier choice to be in love. This happened to me [and her]. All the other choices we made were more important to each of us and for each of us, the choice to not be in love became actionable. We each in our own way falsified or denied till we could part with the least emotional hurt.

My decision not to love lasted a good long while. Busy making lots of other choices that I must have found self-fulfilling.

Whether I was available or not whether I acted to avoid situations, one is still likely to get bushwacked. I was and had to ask and make a choice. Made it said it and reciprocation ensued. Now eventually this situation became one of where the other initiated the choice not to be. Hard to accept ego etc but lots of the situation [ she was having an affair in love with someone else] enabled me to go through a process of denial and devaluing leading to being able to choose not to be in love.

We have I believe an integral need to love, to share; socially, culturally and biologically. So when we experience the shift from being loved to not being loved, for a while one crashes a bit, not in love just suffering withdrawal symptoms.

Next, I made a choice to commit rather than love. Here I am separating affection, endearment from love. Eventually, I made a decision to uncommit. Unraveling was easy. There was nothing to deny or falsify. Still some emotional flotsam and jetsom.

Found I made another choice to love. Based on history this felt like nothing before. Though I, of course, need to concede I could be deluding myself. But then perhaps that’s part of love part of the process a wonderful delusion. The metaphor of an addict raises itself again. Too much introspection not required or perhaps in this case completely unnecessary. The introspection of my youth kept me silent.
Reciprocated.
Never had so much joy being in love being able to love being able to receive love. Giving receiving sharing.
Fast forward to her decision not to be in love.
Sparked all the above introspection.

Thought about making the same statement and going through the process of devaluing falsifying denying.
Can’t actually in all truthfulness make the statement. Have to be true to myself and the fact I still feel love, am still in love. That makes the following process academic but still, I can’t, even as an experiment, imagine doing any of it.

So even if I disregard the choice I made, I am still in love with her. I am. I want to be. I will be.
No choice no decision. Hard but beautiful fact. Feels like its always been there and always will be. Terms we used. Soul Mates. Irrational Ridiculous Romantic Dream Delusional. Don’t care. Label away. What is is what is.
What is is that……
I know now I can say what it means to love, to be in love, with a confidence, a conviction, not in a belief, but in a fact as physical and hard and clear as a diamond and yet at the same time as ephemeral as starlight.