As Valentine’s Day has been approaching, I've found myself trying to write a blog post multiple times, metaphorically ripping pages out of a typewriter, crumbling up cliche ideas in frustration. I wanted to write something new, but couldn’t find the words to say what I know about love this year. I didn’t want to write something you’ve heard before, even though all my thrown-out drafts about self-love are something I think we all should learn to work toward. In the past, my ideas were overflowing this time of year, because even though I haven’t found romantic love yet, I am beyond grateful for the love that surrounds me in all its forms. I use that as a source of inspiration to deepen my art and ideas about love. Especially on a blog surrounded by romanticizing life, I felt like this post should have been easy to write, but instead I’d rather be blunt with you and tell you it’s not.
I realized I have the tendency to try to have things figured out, and recently someone really special in my life (you know who you are) told me I don’t need to feel that way. Certainty is a rare feeling, and oftentimes an illusion. We never truly know what’s going to happen, but maybe that’s the beauty of life, the discovery of the unexpected.
Over the last few months, I’ve become a huge Phoebe Bridgers fan, a bit late to the party, I know, but her poignant songs have introduced me to a new side of what art can be: one that does not strive to fix or conclude, but shows that artists can center their writing around sitting with emotions. In an LA Times interview in 2017, the author wrote, “Another of her [Phoebe’s] convictions is that a song can raise questions without answering them, an idea that puts her music at odds with the neatly resolved melodramas that flourish on Top 40 radio.” Phoebe then refers to Taylor Swift’s discography consisting of stories that do exactly what Phoebe’s melancholic songs do not.
As someone who’s been heavily influenced by Taylor, I realized something about my writing that I’d never thought of before: I constantly strive to resolve, when in reality, that’s not always what’s important. While I gravitate towards both Taylor and Phoebe’s work, my new goal is to find a balance between sharing what I believe to be true while also being honest about not knowing or understanding what I wish to have figured out.
With that said, I want to share part of an instagram caption I wrote two years ago on my private account, when I was 18 and felt similar to the way I feel this year about Valentine’s Day: “Through the simple joys that can be found in day to day life, I think that God shares with us so many things that reflect love, things like the taste of hot coffee in the morning, songs that remind you of how great He is, words delicately pieced together in a book, butterflies, paintings of roses and Paris, silent laughter with your friends, and the way the sunlight bounces off the water.” I still stand by this statement and seek to find joy in small ways that love shines.
What I’ve learned in the past two years is that love shows itself in different forms, and I hope to appreciate and find it in all its intricacies and hidden qualities. I’ve found love in the way I can text my best friends at any hour of the night knowing they’ll be there for me, in becoming a regular at my favorite coffee shop where I see familiar faces, and in the way I can always ask for a hug from the person who encourages me to be okay with uncertainty. Love has surrounded me in the interactions with people who have given without expecting anything in return, but it’s also shown itself in the act of sharing love. I find love when I write a poem that inadvertently makes others feel less alone, when I listen to a friend who just needs someone to talk to, when celebrating others for their accomplishments, and surprising someone with their favorite food.
So this Valentine’s Day I simply want to sit with the aspects of love I understand and hope to continue sharing in my life, while also admitting that there are things I don’t have figured out, because I believe that love is honest and complex and simple at the same time. And maybe the goal isn’t to ever have love all figured out, but to keep seeking and learning about all its different forms.
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