The embarrassing weight of loving
relinquishing shame, reveling in desire, dissecting the shit out of my love life
A man’s appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite—for food, for sex, for simple attention—is always voracious: she always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist. Jessica Zimmerman, “Hunger Makes Me”
In Love in the Time of Cholera, Florentino Araza said something about his heart having “more rooms than a whore house”. My heart is built more like Rodriguez’s crooked hotel in his song Cause, but my heart is not “full of rumors or crooked-face out-of-tuners”. It is something like a hotel wreaking of an old van, sagebrush, roses, salt, cheap wine, Arm-N-Hammer deodorant, wildfires, tobacco, spliffs, whiskey, laundry detergent, tom-ka soup. Many vacated rooms decorated with memories; beautiful photographs taped on the wall, stinking of the perfume of bygone passions, littered with love letters, unmade beds. A cigarette is still burning in an ash tray. The bath tub faucet is dripping and there’s still piss in the toilet. Curtains are billowing in front of an open window. The breeze is ancient. I am happy to pay the rent.
My heart has been through the wringer and hung on the line and will do it all over again if it means it gets to love, even for a little while. I have been in relationship after relationship for nearly 6 years. I write this from one of my occasional lapses. The steady line-up and small gaps in between are enough to rouse concern, criticism, teasing. They are small enough to have questioned myself over and over and over again, how do I keep getting myself into this? Small enough to develop shame over my romantic appetite. The cigarette I smoke after a breakup has barely finished by the time my heart leaps at another lover.
I’ve reflected on my prolific love life to the bone, leading to a few theories behind my chronic relationships. Maybe growing up with an unstable family unit and unreliable, absent parental figures has led me to seek that unfulfilled consistent care and comfort in partners. Perhaps it’s an insecurity thing and I find validation in the affection and attention given to me by my partners. At the end of the day I love to love. I love to connect. I love to share meaning and experience. People excite me and make me curious. Love is my way to dive deeper into this life, into people and places and things. My therapist helped me realize it could be all of these things at once.
But I’m embarrassed.
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