7 word horror story: to be loved is to be known
this is a universally terrifying maxim. i won't lie, it terrifies me. "terrifies" is definitely a choice of word. i've been terrified for as long as i can remember. i'm writing on my lunch break once again. i wanted to take a nap, truthfully. it's been a long week of a long week. funny that i say that since i got through a three-day weekend. four-day workweeks feel like six-day workweeks, somehow. time gets skewed like that when a civic holiday comes around.
the low pressure of rain and being in the "F" of a nine-to-five workweek begets a sluggishness that only the anticipation of days off can provoke. and still i feel as alert as if that weren't the case. but, you know, it is raining, and it is a good time as any to write about this. the prospect of being loved smells like rain.
everyone wants to be loved to some degree. that is universal, too. people quantify love in different ways, but it comes down to reciprocation in some shape or form (love from self, love from kin, love from community). i spent a better part of 2024 "researching" love. i did it so much i didn't allow for love to "research" me. i was offered love of various sorts within the span of 9 months through the new year, and i placed each under a microscope. i didn't come up dry. it was only during fool's spring that the answer was intellectualizing love wasn't the answer.
i started reading novels again. the last novel i read, that i can recall, was "south of the border, west of the sun" by haruki murakami. i read "norwegian wood" before that. i'm working through "the volcano lover" by susan sontag. it's probably one of the longer novels i've started reading, but i hope to finish it. the last long novel i started to read was "one hundred years of solitude" by gabriel garcía márquez, however i got lost in the middle of his world building--one that requires discipline and attention--and didn't pick it back up. i hope to finish this sontag book. i find that immersing myself in words spun into a narrative of love will keep me from being so scientific.
i can't help it, though. i seek to understand things by picking them apart. i've torn up paper and put it back together in a jigsaw fashion. i've disassembled a simple lamp to see what was inside. i've peeled carefully along a leaf's veins to follow its vascular map. love is not concrete, so this poses a challenge to this side of me.
i don't think understanding love as it is, is meant to have a finality. this unknown is something that sends a shiver down my spine, similarly to the crack of thunder that rattled the windows just now. the unknowns of being loved are scary for subjective reasons, but it's not something to be feared.
to be loved is to stand among the humid film under galvanized clouds. love is being open to the risk of being heartbroken but love is not meant to hurt. i used to think love was not possible nor true without pain. but what do i know? i'm still figuring this out, or maybe there's nothing to figure out. i just need to hold rain in my palm.