The Lie that Love is Enough

One more time. C’mon girl, you can do it. I spoke the words over myself for the tenth time that dawn, praying that, if prayed loud enough, they would somehow end up as a prophecy instead of a plea. After all, isn’t that what the poets and prophets did? Wrote and wept tears of ink until their words became holy on parchment? But I guess that doesn’t work for pleas prayed at the gym, and so I watched as the tears came cascading down my cheeks, an overflow of grief finally emerging under the weight of dumbbells and wrist curls. Taylor Swift was right when she wrote “down bad, crying at the gym; everything comes out teenage petulance,”¹ because the only coherent thought I could conjure while my throat tightened with sobs was, “Fuck it, I was in love.”²

I didn’t know what love was before this year, romantically speaking. Yes, I had my share of high school crushes and college flings, but nothing where a pretty end was a logical or even possible destination. They ended much as I expected, albeit typically more brutal in real life than in my head, but I never considered those relationships becoming a deeper part of my life other than a bad story to share at the bar. In fact, long-term attachment was the last thing my radar was searching for when I met him, and honestly my first instinct was to say no when he first asked me out. “I don’t have time for this.” “Who the fuck does he think he is, tracking down my email address?,” I chafed to my friends, endlessly moaning that God always brought boys into my life at the least convenient moment for me. Funny how we spend years praying, pleading for divine gifts only to gripe about them when they land in our lives. Finally, one of my girlfriends spat out at me, “Then ignore his freaking email, Kami; it’s not rocket science.” I couldn’t though, that was the issue, because I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting him. Oh, what tangled webs we weave when we first deceive our hearts, when we never let our desires be seen. 

Okay, fine, I told myself, typing back a short yet sweet response. One date and we’ll see how this one can go wrong. You know it can’t last forever, so don’t get your hopes up; he’s just another one of the boys you’ll add to your long list of lovers. I rewrote the lines in my journal, prayed them as my head hit the pillow, meditated on them while my body rose for the day. Yet even the best laid plans have a way of crumbling at their cores. 

Have you ever been there before? You told yourself it was just a summer thing, you promised yourself your heart was not up for sport, you, hell, only ever entered this relationship on the basis that you’d protect your heart at all possible costs. And still, you catch yourself dreaming of them as you swing by the local coffee shop, hoping to miraculously catch their face when you know they’re not there. You feel your heart leap out of your chest when you see them, pushing past strangers as everyone around you vanishes like vapor until it’s just the two of you standing alone in this world and somehow that feels like enough, more than enough. You answer questions you never thought you’d be asked, picturing little girls with his hair and your eyes in your mind’s eye, like a great prophecy and suddenly you realize your heart could stop at any moment, because you are in love. 

This may come as a shocker to you, but this piece is not over, far from it, in fact. The protests commence: “But you were in love! You did it! You found your happily ever after.” I did do it; I was in love. And love is not where the story ends but merely a turning point in the tale. Because suddenly this relationship I told myself would be nothing at all now felt like everything. His name on every page, his handprint on every part of my soul, a life I had never considered was weaving itself in front of me by magic, and I couldn’t bear to look away because I knew, deep in my bones, it was everything I had ever wanted. Adventure. Safety. Kindness. Affection. A partner who would fly me to my heart’s desires, and under a cloudless midnight sky, I at long last found someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It was more than love, it was the life I wanted and consequently the life I lost.

As our conversations went deeper, like drinking more and more from a mystic love potion, we began hitting walls, some put up by him, others that belonged to me. Life handed us both nasty ghouls and ghosts, and we both struggled to exorcize our demons while helping keep the other persons’ in their tombs. At first, this worked fine; he listened and grieved with me over the demonization of my roots, and I offered kindness against the monsters of his scars. While winter bled into spring however, we hit a canyon where I was ready to leap into the abyss and crawl out on the other side victorious, and he wished to stay safe on the same side, no matter the sting to him or to me. I begged, pleaded with him to reconsider, told him I’d be there beside him for all time, no matter what, but some caverns just can’t be crossed. 

“And in one conversation, I tore down the whole sky.”³ 

On my knees, I fought through every day, slipping on lipstick like lies and concealer to hide the tear stains grooved into my cheekbones, waking up every day alone and fighting the urge not to get up at all. I lost more than the love of my life that night; I lost all the hopes and healing that I found through him, through us, and the life he showed me was possible. For a long time, I felt too ashamed to ever call what we had love; for if love never fails, how could we have had love?

A few weeks later, while I was battling an incredibly agonizing medical procedure, he reached out to me relentlessly, asking how I was and wanting to see me. Despite the warmness of newfound spring in his heart, mine continued to frost over, too fearful of letting him in again, because I thought if I did, my heart might be irreversibly shattered. While I deeply regret my choices then and would do anything to bargain with Father Time to rewrite what I wrote, Mother Wisdom has blessed me with the capacity to see that we really did share love during the time of us; I truly did love him like daylight, and he truly did love me like starlight. However, that love wasn’t enough to cover up miscommunication, closeting our own demons, and hiding deeply rooted shame. Perhaps if we both would’ve let love into those places, it could have given us the courage to address those grievances, and we might still be in love. But the shelf-life of those dreams have long since expired. Love is a very powerful gift, but to say you have love and thus you do not need anything else in any other relationship is a lie. Love offers us wings to self-examine our own shortcomings, to speak honestly when someone has wounded us, but it cannot do these things for us. We have to make the hard choices of doing the work ourselves and with those we are in community with in order that our love may blossom in all of its glory and goodness. 

It’s been three months since I’ve seen his face, and hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of him, smile at a fleeting memory, savor the kindness he gave me. Perhaps a part of me will always love him, since I did indeed plan on waking up beside him for the rest of my days. Yet I don’t think that’s a bad thing or shame myself for those lingering affections anymore. Love is The Divine, powerful and mystical, mysterious and provocative, and we need more of it in our lives not less. We must allow love to be more than just in us though, to move through us, touch each and every part of our lives and the lives of those we love, to reap the other fruits of what’s holy, such as honesty, patience, goodness, and gentleness. All of these not only stem from love but simultaneously turn earthly love into heavenly love, and that is how the sacred collides with the ordinary. That is how love becomes enough.

References

Taylor Swift. 2024. On The Tortured Poets Department. Republic Records.

TTPD 📓 in 2024: Taylor Swift lyrics, Taylor Swift Wallpaper, Taylor Swift Songs. Pinterest. (2024, February 20). https://www.pinterest.com/pin/ttpd-in-2024–70298444178063492/

1.  Taylor Swift. (2024). Down Bad. On The Tortured Poets Department. Republic Records.
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2.  Swift. Down Bad.
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3.  Taylor Swift. (2024). The Tortured Poets Department. Republic Records.
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