notes on love (i)

a scrap of a thought

(I’m thinking of writing shorter, more frequent posts! Let me know how the format feels to you. Originally this was a section in a bigger, five-ish part essay, and then each part felt like its own essayette. Here’s one of them.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the avoidant-anxious attachment spectrum (as usual), but specifically how people behave differently in situations where, through nobody’s fault or unreasonable behavior, someone’s feelings get hurt.

I will be the first to admit that I’ve found myself on both ends of the dysfunctional behavior spectrum: I’ve been the one to close into myself and ostensibly self-regulate and change my behavior and tell myself that everything is fine and we don’t have to talk about it, while also, unbeknownst to myself, I’m harboring unresolved discomfort that is going to give me an emotional repetitive strain injury in a month. I’ve also been the one to insist on talking about something to the point where nothing is actually getting resolved, and me confusedly unspooling my emotions is inadvertently jabbing my loved one in the metaphorical side over and over again, no matter how many times I insist that they haven’t done anything wrong.

I simultaneously think that when it comes down to it, the only thing that matters is love, and at the same time, sometimes love isn’t enough. The only thing that I think consistently drives relationships is a deep, axiomatic commitment to accepting one another in all shades and forms, and at the same time, wanting this isn’t the same as following through on it.

I think people are mostly just little animals that want to be understood and unconditionally accepted for who they are, and a lot of surprising destructive behavior stems from them (me, etc.) lashing out because they preemptively feel like they are going to have to fight/beg/cry for these needs to be met.

And sometimes those needs actually can’t be met for whatever reason, and strangely enough, when this becomes clear, at least for me, I’m overtaken by a sense of total calm, like being in the eye of the storm. Like, oh, OK, so I’m not actually going to find what I need here, so I’ll just go. I think so much hurt stems from there being ambiguity over whether you’re going to get the love you need from this particular person/community. Then you kind of get desperate and confused, like, should I be sticking around or not? And real, consistent understanding and love is honestly so rare, and that makes it so hard to jump ship and try again somewhere else.