love

sometimes i think that love must be something you choose to do. or at least something i choose.

just like i choose to be happy, and to be good to myself, and to feel every sensation in and on my body, i choose to love. it's so easy. it's really so easy to love someone, to see them and their light, to see how to be good to them and bring out their strengths and see the scope of their trauma and sit with them in it until you can work out a way out together.

i say it's easy but i've known it to be hard, i've known narcissism. but is it narcissism, because i didn't turn love inward, i turned hate inward, and couldn't find a base from which to love. when you spend every cognizant energy on self-destruction you can't focus a love for anyone else. but that's no longer the case.

what does it mean, however, that i so intently focus my love on a single person at a time?

it has always been so, and it has always been at the expense of the energy i have to love others. i talk such a big game in terms of friendship, i want so desperately to be an excellent friend, and yet i always find myself looking past a friend who is speaking for the love object, the single recipient of everything i have, my energy, my happiness, my goodness.

is this wrong?

what does conventional wisdom say?

the movies, they say, find the love of your life, the one and only, the right one.

unlikely to be a complete sentiment but a useful gesture nonetheless.

my mother, she says, tolerate everyone. it's better to have lots of friends, you're going to end up alone, and so on and so forth.

she has excellent friends, and she's an excellent friend. she sees truth and trauma and she fucking helps because she invests her energy in working out how to do so. she's loyal and a rock. she would shield me from anything.

i want to be a better friend.

i want to be a good lover, too, and i'm a good lover when my heart is in it.

i want to tell them that i love them and to tell me to be better to them.