(no subject)
I knew you'd be angry when I asked you, "how do you love something?"
I started to hate you as soon as you answered with, "you just do"- because that wasn't what I meant.
What I meant was, when you think about a song that you listened to when you drove home at night, backing slowly out of the parking lot of the high school and tracing the familiar path home (you could do it with your eyes closed, you thought, but would never dare try)- when you thought about that song, years later (approximately 5 years later), it was with such a fondness, such a profound feeling of discovery and pride (for how mature you seemed to be, even at 16), that you knew that the way you felt about that song could only be described as love. Even though you remember weeping on that particular car ride home when the windows were open and you were trying to determine how you felt about X kissing you, or Y saying he missed you, and you still worried about other things- things larger than that small town- things like whether you'd marry one day, or whether you'd ever reach a point where you felt totally in control, totally decisive- yes, even then, you knew you loved that song, and maybe even (or am I crazy?) that song loved you right back.
This is what I meant when I asked you how you loved something. And when you answered so inaccurately, so incompletely, I knew how I did not love something, and how that something was you, even though you did this thing were you looked left and then right before you kissed me. Even though you tugged on the back of my shirt to get my attention, like you were ten years old, and I pitied you but wanted to hold you all at once. These were the ways I wanted you to answer the questions I asked. These were the ways I wished you thought about the world, and the ways in which you formed sentences and tracked your memories. And when you didn't- when you just formed a few words and hastily threw them together because you thought that equaled meaning- well, that was when I felt lonely, when I thought, "well, hay, you tried", and I felt ready to give up. And so, that's what I'm doing now- I'm giving up on this question and moving on to the next:
I started to hate you as soon as you answered with, "you just do"- because that wasn't what I meant.
What I meant was, when you think about a song that you listened to when you drove home at night, backing slowly out of the parking lot of the high school and tracing the familiar path home (you could do it with your eyes closed, you thought, but would never dare try)- when you thought about that song, years later (approximately 5 years later), it was with such a fondness, such a profound feeling of discovery and pride (for how mature you seemed to be, even at 16), that you knew that the way you felt about that song could only be described as love. Even though you remember weeping on that particular car ride home when the windows were open and you were trying to determine how you felt about X kissing you, or Y saying he missed you, and you still worried about other things- things larger than that small town- things like whether you'd marry one day, or whether you'd ever reach a point where you felt totally in control, totally decisive- yes, even then, you knew you loved that song, and maybe even (or am I crazy?) that song loved you right back.
This is what I meant when I asked you how you loved something. And when you answered so inaccurately, so incompletely, I knew how I did not love something, and how that something was you, even though you did this thing were you looked left and then right before you kissed me. Even though you tugged on the back of my shirt to get my attention, like you were ten years old, and I pitied you but wanted to hold you all at once. These were the ways I wanted you to answer the questions I asked. These were the ways I wished you thought about the world, and the ways in which you formed sentences and tracked your memories. And when you didn't- when you just formed a few words and hastily threw them together because you thought that equaled meaning- well, that was when I felt lonely, when I thought, "well, hay, you tried", and I felt ready to give up. And so, that's what I'm doing now- I'm giving up on this question and moving on to the next: