People have loved me. Some have loved me no matter what I did to them----to the point of pathetic desperation---and in my younger years, they suffered my cruel and subsequent abuse, neglect, or betrayal of them for being so foolish. Others, (wait is it plural)? okay if I’m honest, only one person, has loved me totally as I was, as I am. That was years ago. Once in all my years. I can hold out hope for it to happen again. Or I can face what is most likely.
Everybody else has loved the idea of me rather than the real version. A few months in, after the first blush of infatuation has faded away to its inevitable pale reality, they start the changing me process. Be more this. Do more that. Will you stop wearing that. Please be less whatever. And I’d try my hardest to conform. I’d mold, bend, twist, contort, whatever it took to be this vision of me they wanted. A version of me that I never truly was and had no intention of ever being for any length of time.
Later on, I’d wonder what I did wrong. The answer? Nothing. It was just that they’d look at me from the very beginning and make their assumptions. They placed all their ideals onto me as if I were a blank canvas of their dreams. No. I was just a girl, with a history, with a rich, intricate, tapestried past. A girl that could not be undone or purified, just a person that had to be accepted, as I was, good or bad. But I rarely was. They’d just be captivated by big blue eyes, a girlish laugh, a certainly studied and a well-crafted wit---as perfected over countless encounters on airplanes, bars from coast to coast, at intimate cocktail parties and on the anonymous commuter rail while reading---- the physicality of long leg bones, broad shoulders, or an enamored preoccupation with whatever animal thing that binds people to each other in the early stages, pheromones, expectations, desires, things we were taught as children, but ultimately the eventual nothingness that seems like everything worthwhile you cannot explain. I’ve done it myself. Felt drawn to a height that seems familiar, to the protective, masculine, earning-potential assigned calculatingly to a pair of hands, an eye color that promised not only strong sexual prowess but unearthly-strong offspring, the please let me touch it shape of a back or thigh, a vulnerable yet steady collarbone, a shoulder width that spoke of wingspan and more protection, a strong neck, full lips, an arched eyebrow, all of it so much like fashion in season, like fleeting beauty that must be possessed if not controlled, owned, and then discarded at will when next season’s alluring new attributes reveal their soon-to-be coveted faces, bodies, voices, movement and thrill. Ever-changing. Ever-adapting.
How long does it take to get to the root? A year? Two? A lifetime? Never?
The older I get, the more I believe we never really know someone. And maybe all those characteristics we toss upon another like a Jackson Pollock painting, created with intention and abandon in one fell swoop, we paint a picture of the love we want. It is all a creation in our mind. That person will always, always, always and forever never be that thing we create so thoroughly with our own imagination. Never in a million years. Perhaps if we accept our imagination in conjunction with who they are we can strike a balance and love that person for life. Reality is too big a burden to bear. And when the construct of fantasy comes crashing down, the burden is worse. No one, in their true iteration, is ever exciting enough, dynamic enough, or beautiful enough, to be that one we love with our whole hearts. We love our own shrouded version of them, the one we’ve created. That’s who we love. That’s who we choose. The rest we ignore. And the blinders stay on as long as we can see through our rose-colored glasses, staring at our own inventions, happily.
Stepping back, if the bubble bursts, if the imagination fails us one day, we see only that real person that flawed human being, in all their rawness, in their ugliness and beauty, in all their insecurities and strengths. So much reality can be a downer. And it’s so much easier to go and replace it like a new car. Get rid of that old thing that is reliable and paid for. Go put yourself in debt with a shiny new thing, all fresh, pure, and dripping with all the paint you blast upon it. Your next masterpiece. Your showstopper. Until the paint dries and time passes. And it needs maintenance. And upkeep. And your time.
I promise to change. For you. But I won’t. It’s an empty promise. One none of us should ever declare. Never promise to change unless you are truly flawed. And in that case, promise yourself. And shut up about it. Don’t change for another person. It will never work. Nor should you ever expect change from anyone either. Love is being able to see the imagination and the reality in one view. And collect that thought in your mind and balance it. The imagination keeps things exciting. The reality keeps a thing real. You can’t have a love that lasts without both.
At least that’s how I see it. My imagination has made many of my relationships last and last and last. For too long, perhaps. You stare at your masterpiece even as it fades, crumbles, and falls apart. Because it is priceless. It is yours.
What a thing to create. What a thing to destroy.
