Beneath the Fear Is Love

this leaf-rubbing is on the back of a voter registration form. He named it "Ms. Jane in Autumn" because the colors reminded him of me. It's the one piece of his artwork that I didn't give back. 

I don’t mind saying that I am a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy champion. After eighty-bajillion years of therapy, I can argue down almost any distorted negative thought that depression and anxiety send my way. (I often think our political system could use a course in CBT. ALSO, all of our other systems.) But there’s one negative idea I just can’t get away from: The conviction that I will never again find love.

I understand that I have no way of knowing. I would never tell a friend they were too ugly, too fat, too old to be loved, but this is what my brain thinks, particularly when it comes to my (main) attraction to masculine-presenting people. I don’t even believe in those standards, but they are so, so hard to refute. It’s sort of the core of my belief system that everyone deserves love, and I know it gets found in a million different ways by everyone, including by me.

There’s no real reason to assume that the romantic part of life is over for me, but in some ways, it would feel like a relief to let it go. Mostly, I go along buoyed by gratitude, goal-setting, and Prozac, but the yearning, well, lets go ahead and call it loneliness, is still there, stubborn and ardent as life. Sometimes, a flash, a mini-panic that SOMETHING IS MISSING AND I’LL NEVER FIND IT.

The last time I really-and-truly fell for someone in a (briefly) requited way was in fall of 2016. It’s startling to realize that that was THREE ENTIRE YEARS AGO. In my brain and heart, it feels like not very much time has passed at all. The love is thorough, the pain is fresh, and it makes me SO MAD AT MYSELF. I would never stand over a grief-struck friend and yell GET OVER IT ALREADY but that’s exactly what I feel like doing to myself.

We met at my old, dear library afterschool program job—he was the cutest security guard. He’d take frequent shifts in the children’s department and draw or play Legos with me and the kids. One day, we painted galaxies, I forget why. Okay, so neither of us was being particularly amazing at our jobs in those moments, but the kids made more art that school year than I’ve ever facilitated before or since. So that’s something.

One Friday, we played Monopoly—I forget why, usually I banned it because it stresses the kids out and who wants to play a game about rent, anyway? But that early-evening, it was like we were all counting money and being play-tough in a bubble of peace. His knee was touching mine under the table and it was maybe the deepest sense of belonging I’ve ever felt—like he and I and the students and the library and the city and the WHOLE world were a family for a few minutes.

On the day after Daylight Savings Time ended, we were supposed to have a Pokémon walk but he had to cancel.  He texted, though, that he really did like me back and we decided to plan a date. It all felt so settled and hopeful: I would canvass my ass off, Hillary would win, and then we’d snuggle. (That is maybe the saddest sentence I’ve ever typed in a lifetime of sad sentences.)

The day after Hillary lost, I walked into the library, where the podium for our kid-election was still decorated with red, white, and blue stars, and started sobbing. He was summoned from upstairs to come and comfort me. Holy Jesus, that hug. That love, that man, that end-of-the-world day.

Our date was that Friday—I remember that it was Veteran’s Day because he was off from the library and could come visit me on the Rosemont campus, the bookstore being one of my three jobs at the time. (Oh bookstore, another lost love.) As soon as I took his hand though, he changed his mind, or maybe he’d come to let me down easy? Either way, he did nothing wrong, it was just dating, just life. We spent a few hours chatting, shivering, and half-cuddling under a beautiful yellow tree, bright with cold sun. Nobody did anything wrong, just a shift that couldn’t be unshifted.

Logically, (ha) there was no need for a broken heart. A bad match isn’t personal, I know, I know. But after the election, I needed a win so much, TOO MUCH. (It wasn’t really registering yet how important Kamala Harris’s win would be to me.) I needed the pre-election hope to somehow come back, and I needed that hope to be him. Now that I type it, that’s a lot to have put on one human being, and on myself as well.

Now, whenever a cute guy starts to seem even a little possible, I’m petrified. I’m like a spooked horse who wants to kick down every barn wall and escape to a meadow of infinite Gilmore Girls episodes.  The littlest hope from a blushing handsome face makes my unhelpful brain want to convince me that IT WILL ALL COME CRASHING DOWN, that love or even just a little spark of attraction with somehow make it 2016 again, with the panics and the sobbing and the rage-driving and the Thanksgiving ruining.

By some miracle, I’ve made a happy, angry, protest-filled life in the past three years, but it feels like the slightest loss of control, the smallest step towards vulnerability, would take it all way. When I was little, I used to wish so hard for anyone (besides, so amazingly, my mom and my three closest friends) to protest with, and now, though the world is so full of suffering and fear, I, by some crazy grace,  have a version of the life I’ve always wanted, connected to ALL of my fellow humans in a way I would have never thought possible, with every march, every sign, every letter to congress. For the last three years, my love has been the whole world, which is wonderful but not conductive to snuggles. Still, I don’t want risk anything taking that connection away.

As I wrote this out, I could feel my heart loosening a little, letting out a little of that vast reservoir of love I had in fall of 2016. I’m grateful to have reached the point of honoring that love. I would like him, the beauty and trauma and tragedy and silliness of loving him, not to take up so much space in my heart, but he does. Maybe I’m a little bit trapped in the amber of that week because it was so important, because he was so important. That’s good. Maybe I’ll just love him as long as I need to, which is probably forever, and then maybe I’ll love someone else. Maybe even that someone else’s someone else too, who knows?

Maybe time isn’t frozen in my heart. Maybe it’s just going at its own pace. Speaking of time, this took forever to type because I’ve been texting two cuties on Bumble, so it’ll probably be okay.