I Think I Love You: Part 2

I Want To Know You Love Me

It was only a couple months later that I realized I really liked this new girl at my school. But Ariel didn't really like that I also liked guys. She might have been more confused that I was. I had a girlfriend in junior high but that was my attempt to “force” myself to be straight and to cover up the little crush I had on Elijah before we were friends. I did like Lily but not as more than friends. But I liked Ariel more than I had liked Dustin or Elijah. But I screwed it up by being honest about my feelings. I wrote just as many poems about her than my secret crush on my straight best friend. I stuffed some notes into her locker. Because I could. Because that was normal. And I desperately wanted to be normal. But normal is both relative and overrated. For me, liking guys felt more normal. She was the exception. The one I would “go straight for.” I had hoped that Elijah would be my friend again when I told him I liked a girl now, but he burned that bridged with no hope of reconstruction. 

I lost my best friend, my boyfriend cheated on me, and then my dream girl straight up rejected me. So I gave up on relationships and “Snapchatted" back every guy who flashed me a smile and dropped his pants. But all I really wanted was to hear the "I love you’s" even if they were void of love. It's not like I was going to hear it from someone who actually loved me because they had all abandoned me. So eventually I decided that if I was going to keep screwing around, I might as well fuck up my life all the way. Literally. I thought having sex was normal. I thought sex was the ultimate expression of what love should be, and I so desperately wanted love. So I thought I could skip straight to that climax, but it didn't feel normal for me. Even kissing felt wrong like it was against my nature. With a little soul searching and research I figured out that I'm pan-romantic asexual. So now how am I suppose to find someone who's as fucked up as I am who would also be ok with a sexless love life?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm even capable of love. My girlfriend, my best friend, my boyfriend, my dream girl. I don't think I was in love with them as much as I was in love with the idea of being in love. Everyone seems so desperate to find love. It’s what all the books and movies are all about. So I thought it was normal for me to want it too. But it took me fucking up one last time to finally be in a place where I’m ok with not being normal. And I'm really ok if I never find this love everyone else is chasing after.

    
I’m more than ok with being single. I no longer feel the need to measure my happiness with “I love you’s.” In contemplative retrospect, I was happiest when I was with Elijah, my best friend, you know, before he was bigoted. He never said “I love you.” He didn’t have to. I knew he loved me by his actions. I’m not looking for another Dustin who’s just as screwed up as I am. I’m not looking for another Ariel so that I can feel normal. I’m looking for another Elijah, a better Elijah. A true best friend. Someone I trust and love enough to share my every secret. Someone who will never give up on me. Someone I’m willing to fight for. 

Our hormones tell us that we can find love in sex. Our parents tell us that we will find love in marriage and giving them grandchildren. Society tell us that we can find love in romance and relationships. Our friends show us what love really is. I’m a 21-year-old senior in college about to graduate and enter the “real world.” I don’t need to hear “I love you’s” anymore. I need to see it in my friends who will stick by me till the end. It's not the love I always wanted. It’s the love I always needed. 

Picture Poem - Only a Tattoo

Photo by Beckah Jackman

Poem by David Wright

"Only a Tattoo"

I locked my heart and gave you the only key

The torch of our love is the the only light I need to see

The touch of time only tests our relationship

The canvas of our love only grows as time tightens its grip

It’s only a tattoo

It’s only a symbol of how much time I spent with you

I Think I Love You: Part 1

I Don’t Want To Hear “I Love You”

Is there anything crazier than falling in love in a psychiatric hospital? I’m not sure if it was true love, but it was the first time I said “I love you” and meant it. Where else could I possibly find someone as broken as I am? I’ll never forget my stay at Canyon Ridge Hospital in Southern California my senior year of high school. How can I forget when I’m reminded every time I look at the scars on my wrists? 

When I used to tell the story of my first real relationship, the setting is “summer camp” and I conveniently avoid pronouns. Now I’m a senior in college in New York City and in a much better place in every way. I don’t feel like I have to lie anymore. Instead of arriving in a “school bus,” I arrived strapped down in an ambulance.

Maybe it was Cupid’s arrow or whatever drugs were dripping in my IV, but I fell in love with the first person who talked to me who wasn’t taking my vitals. I was sitting silently in a room with about five other boys who were laughing at whatever teenage boys draw on whiteboards to amuse themselves. 

Then one boy smiled at me and came over. He asked me if this was my first time in a “place like this.” I nodded. The next thing he asked was if I was gay or straight?

Picture Poem: "Lovely Grandma Hands"

Photo by Julie Reay

Poem by David Wright

"Lovely Grandma Hands"

Love is Ageless. We are not.

Wrinkles and Wounds reveal

The Depth that Love has Wrought

And the Lengths to which we have Faced and Fought

For that Love that Will never be Forgot.