When I came home from my first ever date, aged who knows what, I learnt a little more about why the girl I’d been excited to go to a movie with had refused to hold my grubby little hand in the dark.
My family gathered around. It was a big deal, this first date. To hold hands in movies practically signalled betrothal. Then my sister casually said, “Oh, she’s got a boyfriend. Didn’t you know?”
What?! I had never asked. Why had she even accepted the date? Aged, like, 11?
Had it happened nowadays, I might have just asked if she’d care for another date. As if boyfriends and girlfriends and non-binary friends can just be collected, swopped out, gathered, possessed.
Perhaps it was my first inkling of the idea that affection was an entity, something that could be owned or displaced, and that someone could be “got”, like a thing.
It seems like the language of ownership is baked into the way we speak about love relationships. Fabulously single at 55, I am still asked if I “have” someone.
We speak about my love. My partner. My ex-wife. What does this betray, this possessive instinct? Some kind of insecurity, or a secure knowledge?
Not long after that first date, maybe a decade or so, came the profound wisdom that to love someone, you should set them free. Presuming they were tethered in the first place, which isn’t always the case.
Maybe this ownership model of love derives in part from that first sense of discovery of another. A moment of recognition so giddily exciting that the exchange of affectionate commitment seals an implicit deal. And thus, one is possessed.
Almost unconsciously, you may become an accessory, to be taken places. And yes, it can be lost, this love thing. If it’s not cared for, or tries to grow in an environment where it cannot receive what it needs.
Like a little seed that needs earth, air, water, and space to become a big tree, and give fruit and shade. Able to stand the storms and frost and soak up the sun.
So of course it can seem like the most important thing, something to cherish, whose absence, we’re taught, is to be avoided. Every single Hollywood movie teaches us so, and where else do we receive our romantic education?
So it was with a smile that I thought the other day about someone dear to me. I imagined what she might be doing on her way home from a party.
Apparently, there are lights at one of the tidal pools now, and a security guard, so you can swim there at night. I imagined her getting into the pool and saying hello to some strangers, and then pulling out into the water. Sighing with joy, in her element.
I was very happy for her. If she was with someone, happy for them too. (That’s the amazing thing about happiness. It doesn’t matter if it’s yours or someone else’s.)
It was good, thinking of her, helping me remember that the greatest love is the love we can never own. A love that is fleeting, like quicksilver, and gone.
I am lucky to have known so many lovely people in this brief life. I carry the echoes of their love inside me. I am etched with it and indented. I realise I have become a mould of love, shaped by my friends and those I love.
The love I held is gladly gone, but the shape remains. Love that held for a moment, as it left my hand, my eye, my mouth or heart.
I now understand that the only love that lasts, is the love that is given away. It is not mine and is worthless if I try to keep it. It has no meaning if it cannot be given away. I can always love some more.
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