Love is Complicated

This is a speech that I wrote for a digital cabaret performance before I realized that the amount of time I needed to talk between songs actually shouldn't have been this long. Here is that essay now, containing the titles of the two songs I sang, "Being Alive" and "Run Away With Me."

God, love is complicated, isn’t it? It’s such a strange thing to explore romantic love, but then again, it’s such an important part of being alive, right? Exploring intimacy, sharing your personal life with another person, and feeling so comfortable around someone that their presence in your life just feels like something that's a part of all of us. It’s so exciting when you start exploring those possibilities when you’re a teen. If you’re like me, you'll want to explore them much younger than that. I remember my mom always telling me that I couldn’t start dating until I was 13 years old, which is a very reasonable age looking back. However, when I started thinking about the idea of having a girlfriend, it became more and more exciting for me to reach that coveted age. In the end, I rebelled against my parents by starting my first relationship when I was... twelve. Yeah, I know, I’m such a bad boy.

What I’ve learned over the past six years of middle and high school is that starting a relationship isn’t as easy as it sounds. In particular, teenage romance is MESSY. I’m sure everyone has their own stories about their love lives and how hard they tried to start a relationship and the embarrassing lessons they learned from those experiences because I most certainly do. I’ve probably been rejected by dozens of girls over the years, and none of my actual relationships have ever actually lasted more than a couple of months. My first relationship was technically a year long, but it never really got a relationship-type label put onto it. It was just something we both called a relationship but was really just something meant as an excuse to say we were dating. My first real girlfriend dated me for about a month to a month and a half, and my second dated me for about a week. My third actual relationship also lasted about a month, but it was a relationship where even though we put a label on it, we couldn’t even see each other all that often because we didn’t exactly live close to each other. Throughout the years, I’ve had other minor flings and flirtations and relationships that I thought would develop but didn’t, some healthy, some unhealthy, and even repetitions of relationships with various girls. Needless to say, I explored pretty much all of my options because I was so desperate for someone to call my girlfriend.

However, I think everyone has that moment in their life when they realize what being in a relationship actually means. My mom has always told me that love comes to you when you least expect it and when you aren’t actively looking for it. Sure, I understood what she was saying, but I didn’t want to believe it because I wanted to be in a relationship so much. However, the one time that I reached out to someone just to talk to them and get to know them as a person because we probably wouldn’t work anyway resulted in something that changed my life. We never technically called it a relationship, and it was a long-distance affair where we've still never met, but it was still a really special connection to me. It was the first time that I understood what connecting with someone on a personal level actually meant instead of just trying to connect out of some form of desperate excitement. It was the event that made me realize what I value most and what is healthiest for me in a relationship, and it was the time I legitimately told myself, “This one’s different,” and knew I meant it. Since then, I’ve actively avoided situations that feel unhealthy to me. I’ve actively tried to step back from desperately needing a relationship because I now know what it feels like when you truly want to be with someone. I haven't necessarily been the most successful at that mission, but I like to think I've gotten better at recognizing when a connection isn't working out. I’ve never believed that there is only one person on this earth that is meant for every single individual on the planet, but I do believe that everyone can find the person that is perfect for them. I hope that when I find the girl that’s perfect for me, they’ll want to run away with me.