Confession

Love Will Make You Weak from Rya Dyes on Vimeo.

' Confession: Love will make you weak. Not the family kind. That support system that follows you around good or bad and force feeds you help whether you want it or not. The kind that makes you fall. The kind that makes you weak in the knees and silences you as the breath of life catches in your throat. The kind that makes your heart race, skip a beat, or stop. I am terrified of that kind of love. Now we can be anything. We can travel. We can invent. We can create any sort of life for ourselves. But what if we fall in love? So many dreams and identities are sacrificed to love. I am afraid that if I fall in love I will no longer be strong enough to follow my dreams. We are accosted by this love. We are told our whole lives that we want to fall under the spell of love. We believe it will be our saving grace. That if we just had someone who fell in love with us we would feel valuable or important. It could be our reason to live on this earth. Would we still feel this way if it wasn’t taught to us? If we were not raised on fairy tales, chick flicks and bad teen dramas on TV would we want such a damaging thing so badly? I did. Until I started looking at what love meant in the real world. Enter Case 1. My Cousin Julia. In October she married a great guy. Otis. But even though Otis is a great guy, Julia has lost herself. She used to be an artist. She read anything she could get her hands on and she wanted to work with disabled children even though she got her degree in computer engineering. But now she doesn’t read because Otis doesn’t. She hasn’t painted in years. She gets fatter by the day because Otis is fat and rules the kitchen. She sits at a dead end desk job where she is bored out of her skull but says she is content because it pays the bills. Case 2: My Parents. “Happily” married for over twenty years. My mom always wanted to travel. My dad has massive panic attacks when he doesn’t know where he is. Our last family road trip almost ended in divorce. My mom is a very loving person. She loves to hug and touch and be affectionate. She has to ask for hugs or kisses from my dad. They don’t come naturally. My mother does not handle confrontation well. My dad can yell and cuss and crush you in two words or less. My mom rarely travels, has closed off from physical affection and can fight with the best of them. She got hard. Case 3: My Best Friend. He loved her and she wanted a ring so they got married. He’s always been like my brother. When he came home for Christmas from the Air Force he broke down crying telling me that he loved his wife but that he gave up too much. There’s a boy in my life now. I’ve wanted him for a long time but could never have him. For the first time in three years I can. But I won’t let myself. So when he kisses me and my heart tries to flutter I panic. When he touches me and I want to melt into him I keep my feet planted on the ground. I want him. Badly. But my fear keeps him away. Now I have discovered loneliness and I suspect it might be much worse than love. Now I think it may not be falling in love that makes us weak; it is our fear of loneliness.