Throw 4 I Love Yous (Re-post)

The first "I love you" we ever hear is probably from a parent. Usually a mother.
Then we might hear it from a sibling or a relative or a close family friend.
A time comes when we start hearing "I love you"s all over the place.
Our friends are saying it.
Our mouths are saying it.
Our hearts are screaming it.
Our crotches burn with it.
Eventually we say "I love you" and mean it in a way we've never meant it before.
Magical first.
Desperate hunger.

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I've been seeing someone for almost a month now.
There have been no "I love you"s, and I don't see them coming any time soon.
But it's no more or less there than any other situation I've been in prior to this. It's just quieter.

If anything, the unspoken "I love you" is there more because there is a sense of excitement, wonder, and anxiousness. The "I love you" is not thrown like a ventriloquist's voice.
What nervous joy to contemplate the ultimate surprise (and yes love), when someone has love to confess. What a gift. What a miracle.

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I think of my mother. A woman with a sharp tongue, an at times scathing demeanor, and
a heart of gold. She says "I love you" at the end of every conversation, in person or on the phone. But the "I love you" is always a closer, a conclusion... never a focal point.

I don't know if I like the "I love you" as an afterthought. I want the "I love you" in the middle of a funny story, or after you pick me up when I fall on my face, as I am wont to do. Maybe this is fucked. My life is lived in a never-ending climax kind-of-way, therefore I guess it's only natural my desires and yearnings follow that curve.

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The most significant love of my life doesn't speak to me any more. What's crazy is that I love him more than I did when I was with him. But that's how I'm wired. Perhaps I idealise the past; I do idealise the past. When "I hear I love you" I want to hear it forever. I don't want it for a few years and then have it taken away. I want it to breathe and live and change and grow and eventually, with me, expire. It's not that I believe in a "One" for everybody. I do think love is about commitment - to each other, and to the relationship more than anything. It is about experiencing life with somebody. And even if you're not fucking that person any more, up until almost 2 years ago, I have always found it very simple to maintain loving and powerful friendships with exes.

Obviously I have moved on. I've moved on in so many ways and changed so much I often feel like I've metaphorphed in a very Kafka kind-of-way... complete with the revelations, the epiphanies, and the resolve. But I still can not give up this silly human desire to love and be loved. To deny it would surely kill me! I've come so far, and I feel as if I've just begun.