I was standing naked in my kitchen frying an egg, reading Vonnegut, and thinking of you

O.K. Well the next countdown has begun. I shall see Lee next on March 18th/19th.

When Di first said that I was brave for being in love I thought it was an odd thing to say. I wondered what is so brave about loving someone. I have come to realize that the bravery isn’t in the loving, it is in being loved. All love requires a bit of bravery. By allowing oneself to be loved any person with a conscious puts themselves at great risk. Being loved by one’s parents and close relatives is, generally, the least risky love. They loved you when you were helpless and shit in your pants, odds are they will still love you when you are foolish and stupid and ugly (of course I don’t necessarily mean physically ugly). Being loved by your friends poses a slightly greater risk. They are under no genetic obligation to love you, their love is earned. Romantic love is the most frightening sort. With deep romantic love you are earning the love of someone who will, hopefully, still love you when you are helpless and shitting in your pants again.

Knowing the depth of my own love, I am constantly in a mad scramble to be worthy of its counterpart. This is, perhaps, how love works. I have come to realize that I am no longer the center of my own life. I am quietly building up my life around another person. After 24 years of being the center of my own little universe I am giving up that position in favor of someone else. What makes it scary is that it is horrifyingly easy to do. But, as I suggested before, giving over my personal universe to someone else is not the terrifying part, the terrifying part is realizing you are becoming the center of someone else’s life. What a grave responsibility. There is so much potential to inflict harm.

To continue my little space analogy… If I go Supernova on my little universe yes there will be damage. If I make someone else the center of my universe and they go Supernova or wander wildly off course there will be damage, but that somehow seems much more innocuous than the harm I might inflict on someone else’s universe.

I don’t know. I don’t think this makes any sense. Ah, well.

30 Days