It’s 5:13PM on a Wednesday evening as I sit on the balcony of my childhood home where in this moment all I can feel is contentment. It’s 86 degrees and I know that there are issues to be addressed in the context of global warming and rising CO2 emissions that have the potential to ruin our planet furthermore, yet I can’t help but feel elated with the idea of experiencing a prolonged summer so late into the year. That special feeling the warm season brings is enough to heal me, and it seems as though I fall in love with life each time those four months arrive. Yet it’s October, and I’m desperately trying to hold onto those sentiments in order to get through the harsh bitterness of winter nights. So I close my eyes to think about the concept of love and what it means to me, and all I can think about are people, places, and things.
I love things wholeheartedly, inanimate and animate objects, cities and spaces, people and memories. The tangible and intangible. I love writing because I can form my thoughts coherently in such a way that is impossible for me to do so aloud. I love music so much that I try to single out every little sound or instrument on a song, because I want to figure out just how layered a track’s production is. I love cities, in fact I love L.A. and I will never shut up about it even if others are sick of hearing it; they wouldn’t understand how a city became my sanctuary amidst a transformative period of my life. I love the deepness of a blue hue, for its intensity reminds me of summer skies and childhood memories. I love art the way a child would, with the same admiration and curiosity towards the idea of making something imaginary come to life.
I love people the way you pump helium into a balloon, very slowly and carefully in order to avoid a sudden pop, but the air begins to give shape to a red shiny blob and suddenly it grows to a point where it feels as though the heart-shaped balloon inside of me is going to burst. Once it does I cannot stop, for my feelings overflow and pour out of me to the point where I have to make it known in any and every way, that the space where my heart once was has now been seemingly replaced by the form of another’s soul. I love the ocean so much that I visit it frequently and when I go I never want to leave, because I am so enamored with the endless beauty in front of me that has the ability to heighten all of my senses; it feels as though I begin to float up into the air and disappear into the sky who converges into the sea. I cannot imagine living in a place that is not near an ocean, and I know that when I’m older I will run away to the coast to live by the water with my person in a warm wooden house that safeguards all of our memories together.
I am full of love and I give it away so easily that I forget it may not be returned. Experiences will cease, I will run out of heart-shaped balloons to fill, and I will be left with red shiny scraps all over me. Yet I know that before my supply runs out I will have found the one, and I will no longer need the helium tank to pump my heart because it will never prematurely pop again. I will have found the person that would never dare stick a needle through the gleaming red heart-shaped balloon that was given to them, because they will recognize that the silhouette of their existence has become enmeshed into what pumps within me. I know wholeheartedly that this is possible, because there are people in my life who have taken care of the little heart piece they have received from me. The love I have for them has never faltered, it has grown over time into something so beautifully permanent that I know even after the connection has ended and the existence of our relationship ceases, the love I had for that person will forever live on.
I do not have the type of love we are meant to desire but that is okay, because I’ve reached a place of contentment knowing that somehow it will find me. A hopeless romantic is always hopeful in finding the one, and I know wholeheartedly that I will in fact, find the person I am supposed to end up with. We will spend a plethora of hours together that will suddenly begin to merge into days, years, and decades, where finally at the end of our lifespans when each of us dies we will be able say that our connection felt as though it lasted longer than a lifetime. When we are gone and the earth has recycled our bodies underneath the brown soil, the love that emanated from our connection will flow into the atmosphere to find each other and the merging of our souls will come together to form the red heart-shaped balloon. The energy of our fervor will be dispersed as a result of one loud pop, and all the lifetimes we spent together will float up into space amongst the darkness of the night where it will become solidified against an astral backdrop. It will glow so softly behind the clouds as stars for a few million years until they too explode, but the energy will be recycled to become a part of new stars and planets, bounding itself to the galaxy of Andromeda for infinity.
Like the stars, the cycle will endlessly continue and our love will forever live on.
