Have you ever had the urge
To tell someone everything about you?
To learn everything about them
As you hold each other close?
To tell them your dreams and aspirations
Your fears and insecurities
Your values and morals
As you listen to theirs, too?
Have you ever felt the urge
To give yourself to someone
Knowing you can never fill all their needs
Nor can they yours?
The urge to risk your emotions
For a chance to be together
To see if you want each other
In your lives indefinitely?
I know
I’m too old to be this hopelessly romantic
I’m also terrified — of being hurt
And of hurting someone else
I qualify myself a lot
Giving myself reasons to back out
Or to acquiesce if I’m “dismissed”
Holding myself to absurd standards of perfection
Or maybe I self-sabotage
Get in my own way subconsciously
To give them a way out?
I don’t know
I don’t even know
If I know how to love anymore
If I ever did to begin with
Maybe I was just emulating and projecting
I have ideas of what “love” is
This socially constructed word
That somehow encompasses
A wide spectrum of emotions and desires
I know that love is “patient” and “kind”
That it’s “not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude”
I know that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”
At least, that’s what I believe
I believe “love never ends”
And that when you love someone
Deep down, you always will
Even if you don’t want to admit it
Yeah
I’m too old to be this hopelessly romantic
Or maybe I’m lying to myself
To tell myself that I do know how to love
I’m still terrified
Of being hurt and hurting someone else
But that’s a risk I’m willing to take
As long as we take it together
