Love is a type of surrender that I haven’t completely mastered yet.

I would like to learn how if I ever get the chance again. It’s always strange seeing couples on the sidewalks, at games, at concerts, in the park, in the mall. Whether they’re 45 or 15, they’re all over each other. And if they’re the latter then they’re probably tripping over each other, not having mastered walking side by side. Maybe I’m like them in my love skills. I haven’t mastered how to walk side by side.

It’s a balance of sharing and giving of yourself to someone else while maintaining love for yourself. I might’ve attempted that balance once, but I ended up giving of myself completely. I grew up feeling like no one cared, so I learned that I had to love myself despite that. My life has been a constant struggle of trusting and allowing people (family, friends, lovers, strangers) to love me, too. It’s difficult. There is a mutual want for that, but if there is the slightest hint of dishonesty or disrespect, I am closed to you.

Given the fact that I’ve always been a loner, a non-conformist, a black sheep within my family and at school; maybe I’m just the shrew that can’t be tamed. Maybe I’ll be one of those old, grumpy writers who writes a lot of beautiful things in a sardonic tone to live in my apartment on the top floor alone staring out at the birds chasing after each other. Stacked books that form walls around me—the stories of the Greats, who couldn’t quite get it right either.

Or maybe I will find someone who understands my deviant nature; the want to be inclusive but exclusive, on my own, independent but… with.

I am like a cat that sits on the windowsill staring out at the birds, tracing their flight lines to find a pattern, a way. And you, you could be my keeper, the one who feeds me when I can’t catch one and loves me whether I catch one or not. You could be the one I love and the one I hunt eternal.

Whoever you are.