All I Know Is I Know Nothing

I've never been one to desire love for myself. In fact, more often than not, I've rejected love more than I have embraced it fully with open arms and compelete trust. Some might accuse this attachment style as avoidant, and those people just might be the ones to read me with utmost clarity. It is with regret that I learn this too late in life.

I never intended to reject love for as long as I have, and learning the roots of how I come to behave this way is still a current learning process. I simply never saw myself destined to experience love. And at the time, I never realized what I thought love was supposed to be was actually an outdated traditional value taught onto me by those those suffering from those same expectations.

Whether it be through the cinematic lense of watching Disney propaganda, or observing toxicity unfold in almost every interpersonal relationship surrounding my life, love became something I didn't want for myself because through my eyes at the time, it brought more suffering and unreasonable expectations than it did bring the promises of what Hollywood films gauranteed. What's more, is that the fear of being taken advantage of once my trust is given became a predominent motive in my mind to shut that idea away for myself.

Within those lens, love becomes possessive, thus ensuing jealousy, when in reality love comes in so many different forms from more than just one person that we can't expect others to give their totality to us because codependency is born from that extreme. Within those lens, one expects forever, when in reality everything in life is meant to die or at least meet an end so that there comes a new beginning. Within those lens, one develops roles for other individuals, when in reality the identity of a being forever remains fluid throughout their lifetime.

The only lesson in life to remain consistently true about love that I know is that the only way to provide the environment for love to thrive is through respect, trust, and communication. Respect one's boundaries, cultures, values, ideas and self. Trust in your partners that they are as honest as you are to them. Communicating this respectfully can develop the commitment many often look for out of others. Treat others the way you wish to be treated. This unfortunately becomes a gamble as all sides of the relationship need to display such equal treatment.

Loves comes in all forms as love is all around us when we choose to see it: the love of family, both biological and chosen, platonic love found in even the unlikeliest of friendships, the love of the planet we live in for we are part of the earth and so to love the earth is to love ourselves, the love of romantic partners both through the traditional approach and the unorthodox. I accept the love of my families, and excel in platonic love, finding myself in an abundance my teenage self would've never thought possible what with her gaurded heart. I practice listening to the earth every day to tend to its needs as I would for my own body. Romantic love is what I'm still figuring out, and sometimes continue to reject as again, I simply don't see myself as someone who's meant to have at least what I now know are the traditional values and approaches to romantic love.

Like everyone else, I've loved and lost, had my heart broken and broke others' hearts, felt the pain of unrequited love and rejected many others as I did not feel the same. These are canon events everyone experiences when in pursuit of love, and back when I was younger I was immature enough to think I could avoid them. But growth cannot come without life experience, so despite how bitter one can be to see an ex lover, for example, excel in ways they could not in providing for them the way they do for their newer current partners, it is also the responsibility of everyone to learn from their failures so that a better outcome occurs in the future. So forgive and move on from the past as there is more love to be found in the future, or so I'm told. It is our job to grow and do better like all other organisms.

There is a popular notion often described through Hindi scripture that our realities are shaped by how our mind chooses to project said reality. In other words, what you consider reality is only a projection of the mind. Your perception of the world ultimately defines your reality. In that same line of thinking, one could say the same about how we experience love, especially when we have yet to learn self love before pursuing external love. With a low sense of self, one can project that onto their partner, which generates an environment for an unsuccesful love story, thus manifesting the reality you fear to come. Two, let alone three or more for those polyamorous, cannot exist without the first one, and each one needs to be at its fullest in order to compliment the other. I often wonder how mental disorders and universal truths are applied to this philosophy.

I unfortunately find myself in a state of mind where I see myself as a failure within the department of romantic love. For so long, I was what others considered the therapist of my friend groups, passing on advice to others as how to approach their romantic situations when at the time I had little to no experience in it. I cannot bring myself to become that person again after all the years of gained life experience for it is that exactly that life experience that reminds me that all I know is I know nothing. My mind projects a desire for independence accompanied with the enjoyment of others' company, nothing more. Everything is temporary after all, and there are always consequences to your actions.

Maybe with more time I'll be able to learn the key to what others consider a happy ending, but my mind might be too pragmatic to feel reassured in a future like that considering that there are those twice as old as me still figuring it out for themselves. Like myself, I don't think many have much to offer in telling what love should be like for others outside of a handful universal truths, for experiencing love is different for everybody and I do believe that it is meant to remain a unique experience. After all, even our identities are shaped by our memories, which stem from unique life experiences, and even two people who experience the same event still have completely different perceptions that conclude contrasting inferences.

Not to mention that not everyone is lucky enough to be born with the same levels of love surrounding them, such as a family. While I was lucky enought to be born from a mother who loved me to the point that some would argue as smothering, many others are born without having either parent desire them. Experiences like these can shift one's perspective on what kind of love they would want for themselves when in the pursuit of romance.

Love is everything. It's uplifting, it's sensual, it's bliss, it's exciting, it's life itself. It's also depressing, awkward, anxiety inducing, boring, it's death itself. It is up to us to decide what kind of love we wish to project onto the world, or whether we wish to project that energy at all.