The other day I was playing Esther Perel’s card game of intimacy and storytelling Where Should We Begin? and something became extremely clear to me - I love to love. I love to be in love, I love to fall in love, I love to say I love you, I love sex, I love eye contact, I love possibility, I love partnership, I love companionship, and I love to love love. Something about letting another person see this felt so raw, as if the veil was being lifted for the first time. As if to admit this was a big secret I’d been keeping from myself and everyone around me.
In the moment of seeing this so clearly I felt shy and embarrassed, especially as the last two years have shown me how delightful my aloneness is. How much I accomplish alone, how sweet it is to be by myself, how regulated my nervous system is when I’m not waiting for the apple of my eye to text me back. I love to have my routines that no else sees and to romance myself into oblivion, just because I can. In my embarrassment I was able to see clearly how I can hold both truths, the feeling of gratitude for the way my life is now, and the desire to love again. I touch into fantasy only to be brought back by the staggering reality of how little I know of what is next.