all about love
it took me (a hopeless romantic) this long to recover from valentine’s day
i have been chewing and chomping at bell hooks’ all about love for like….3 years now, which thoroughly embarrasses me.
i don’t think its a particularly difficult read to get through (i’ve attempted Black Marxism, good grief) and i am constantly having to convince myself that my struggle to finish the novel isn’t due to a lack of interest. No shade to the Irish community, but I read Normal People in a few hours, and I can’t say that it’s because I liked it. It was just easy to digest, despite the lack of quotation marks surrounding dialogue (interesting stylistic choice).
Anyway, I am truthfully enjoying what bell hooks has to say about loving as a verb, an action, a choice. And yes, every time I read it in public, I do wish it was the beginning of a meet-cute that could be the screenplay for the next 27 Dresses (an objectively superior romcom).
One of the things that has stuck out in my reading of the book is my developing understanding of how deeply i know love. I’m not really ashamed (anymore) to say that I’ve never been in a relationship. It just kind of is what it is at this point. It’s not to say it doesn’t make me sad, or feel lonely sometimes, especially as I see others begin their lives in new places, casually dating, and finding partnership. But I will never shy away from honoring the profound love I’ve been able to nurture in my own life, not in spite of, but because, I have yet to invest in someone romantically.
I have spent a lot too much time analyzing my relationships — to friends, family, community, and maybe to myself too — and pouring myself into them because I know that my ability to love is only as good as I allow it to be with them. And I’ve spent even more time understanding that practicing love with these people as something independent of — not something to perfect in anticipation of the right partner.
freshman year of college, a friend of mine at the time was having some relationship issues with her first boyfriend. We’d been checking in with her about how they were doing, and she updated us that they were taking a break — but only for the next three days; after which they would reassess.
We expressed our weariness of the plan, because she didn’t really seem happy with this boy — issues had compiled at this point after months of dating, and we tried to encourage her to at least consider breaking it off. I expressed my confusion — maybe a little callously — at the proposition of a three day break, to which she responded something to the effect of “well what would YOU know about what a real break is — you’ve never been in a relationship!”
I was grateful that someone called out her name in a little shock that she’d said that to me — it wasn’t a kind thing to say, especially to someone who’d been more than open about my struggles with self-confidence and romantic relationships.
I don’t hold it against her or anything, but it was something I thought about for a while (and admittedly, still do) because it deeply unsettled me. Did people disregard my advice about dating/relationships/boys because I’d never had the experience? Was I really not privy to certain knowledge because I’d never been in love (or even mutual like)? After all, I’d been giving relationship advice to heartbroken friends since at least third grade — didn’t that count for anything?
Maybe it wasn’t the knowledge of love that she considered I didn’t have, but the knowledge of pain — and being willing to look beyond that pain because of the mere possibility that you will one day reach the end goal of love.
I’m no expert on love. And actually, I think the idea of someone like that existing is kind of a scam. What does expertise even mean in the context of human relationships, where people are constantly evolving? It feels like a ploy to get people to buy more self-help books (think like a man, act like a woman i’m looking at YOU).
Love is not one sum game where you “conquer” it or “fail” at it. It’s not an end goal that you achieve in your relationships. And no, I may not know that because of my own personal experience with traditional romance — but I feel so deeply in my bones that I do know love because it has always been around me. My family, my friends, how I feel about the world when people have collective hope. Love surrounds me and I choose to be an active participant in it every day. I know that romantic love can be better than the behaviors and trends we have chosen today — endless talking stages, avoiding vulnerability, trying to maintain as much power in the relationship as possible — because the love that I give and receive has never been that and never will be that.
I am tired of the way love has become so cautious — we are so scared to be hurt and to hurt, to feel powerless, to not seem like we’ve had “too many” failed relationships that I fear we are not truly loving at all. We are so formulaically trying to anticipate the next moves of a partner, and figure out how to not disturb the delicate balance of semi-connection that we have created, that I don’t think we truly allow ourselves to love and be loved.
It exhausts me, it scares me, it makes me continuously hesitant to begin a phase of my life where I do not avoid romance. I am no exception to the things I find utterly disastrous in our pursuits for love. I wonder if that will change.
I think that because I have had to adjust the vision of how love looks in my life, I am invested in understanding it in a political way. Love as liberation. Love as something that cradles me in my platonic and familial relationships. I am trying not to see a lack of romantic relationships as a lack of love, but in a world that prioritizes being chosen in this way by a partner, it isn’t without difficulty. I do have to fight back against the idea that this love that I have yet to experience is something “missing.”
But for this “lack” of love, I feel like I still could write sonnets, essays, books on how much love means to me. Which is how, maybe, I know it isn’t really a lack at all.
I am awestruck at the idea that I could know love even more than I do now. I am not cynical about love’s existence and love’s meaning.
Nonetheless, I do question how, and if, we can truly love in a society that prioritizes independence, personal success, and profit. But I also believe in my own capacity to love deeply, in spite of these circumstances, so I must believe in everyone else’s. And I am comforted by that.
In the cheesiest, most ridiculous way, I fall in love with everyone I meet. I am grateful for these rose colored glasses. I tell my friends I love them at any chance I get, wanting to bring as much softness I can to everyone I know. I firmly believe that love multiplies, it does not divide, and me saying it as much as I possibly can could never dilute its meaning.
The deep, fiery anger I feel for the world we exist in now, is fueled by love — I promise. The knowledge that we can do better, that we, together, can grow something so much more bountiful and beautiful, is a hope intricately weaved with love.
In my eyes, love is not a politic, but it is something that can guide a politic. I believe in radically imagining a better world, behaving in ways that support this vision, and moving in all my relationships in ways that can liberate.
I do this because I believe deeply in the capacity of humanity, that of my own, and of collective humanity, to be better by moving in love.
I recognize, however, that love — in this way — can’t exist as an abstraction; love cannot liberate without intentional action. Think about love for family — as we understand it, socially, we are to love our family because they are blood. They birthed us and raised us, and thus, our mutual relationship is built on love. But what does that mean? What does it mean when the family you are born into does not know love? bell hooks says that love and abuse cannot co-exist. It is not enough to “love” your children, your parents, your siblings, as a foundation, if the house built upon it cannot sustain the relationship in trust, care, and all else that love has to encompass.
Similarly, I don’t see that a “love of humanity” can bring us out of the constant disaster we find ourselves in. As much as you might “love” someone, it cannot absolve you of the political power that privileges your livelihood over theirs.
What is beneath your love? Is it words and promises that you, on your own cannot keep? Or is it a fervent commitment to building and sustaining a network of people who will help each other survive, and thrive, within our material conditions.
Can love be anti-capitalist? Can it be anti-racist, anti-imperialist? Is this love rooted in action rather than just the empty, idealist view of it that exists in rom-coms and fairy tales?
I interrogate how we, as a collective, have chosen to express love because I again, believe in so much more. Where could we be if we truly embraced love as a guiding light to bring us into a warmer future? How could we feel if we loved one another truly knowing the meaning, weight, and possibilities of love?
sometimes i feel like there is so much love to give, to receive, to experience, that i am completely overwhelmed. the thought embraces me, it suffocates me.
what will i do with it all?