Unfortunately, I Love You

I’ve been planning my heartbreak since the third time I saw her. I fell hard and fast. She was going to hurt me more than anyone had hurt me before – I was going to make sure of that. And when she did, I was going to make Britney Spears’s meltdown look like a quiet evening at home. 

They would rue the day I was alone without you.**

Not that this is my first rodeo. I asked a father if I could go out with his daughter and I talked to him for nine months before he said no. There was a girl I had a crush on for years and asked her out multiple times and she said no each time. She was unkind to me during my infatuation, I think to dissuade me, but I loved her anyway. All the girls I’ve asked out have said no. In one sense, this makes it easier, because I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But on the other hand, all these rejections stack up on each other and compound into a discouraging weight.

I’d like to feel a different kind of pain for a change. I’d like someone to go out with me and then break up with me. Or give the ring back. Heck, I’ll take divorce papers or widower status – anything other than the same, “I don’t even want to go on a first date with you because even though you’ll be kind, engaging, funny, and pick up the tab, I already know you’re not worth my time.”

My ego is confused by this. I think I’m a catch and a half, as a mom in Nashville once called me. But twenty-nine years of unmitigated rejection makes one wonder. Twenty-nine years and I’ve been on one proper date. Extra virgin, never been kissed. I don’t know why. I tell myself it’s an old line from an Edith Wharton novel: “I don’t like good girls and bad girls don’t like me.” Maybe. But this makes me out to be kind of cool and the truth doesn’t generally do that.

Maybe it’s that my adolescence was spent as a fish out of water. I came of age in a middle class, conservative environment. As a bohemian with rock ’n roll dreams, there was little chance of finding my people at church camp or chess club. Maybe it’s because the same years were spent in a fantasy land where pornography allowed me to feel wanted by beautiful women without the risk of rejection. Maybe the gods are against me, or the luck of the draw, or a million reasons that don’t matter. 

I’ve tried to stop. I tell myself all women are gold digging whores, which is a nice sexist variant of “all men are trash.” I try to stay in my lane and find contentment in work and friendship. But I’m always falling in love with everyone I can. Whenever I walk in a room, I pick the person I’m going to fall in love with – a face I will never see again, a stranger with kind eyes who smiles back. I’ve always done that and maybe I always will. 

I imagine a psychiatrist would suggest I am constantly being hurt because it’s what I want. Because even though rejection stings, it’s known. Because pain is the only way I’ve known love to feel, so if I want more love (and what else is there?) I need more pain. Because pain is the barometer telling me I’ve tried hard enough, gone far enough. Because I get to lick a new wound and feel sorry for myself.

It doesn’t matter – it’s all self-indulgent, victim-laced masochism. It doesn’t make me special and it doesn’t make me pitiable because everyone experiences pain. That’s the problem with heartbreak: is that to you, it’s like an atomic bomb, and to the world, it’s just really cliché because in the end, we all have the same experience.†

I will mourn this unrequited love and add it to the pile of what could have been if the timing was different or if I was different. Love letters in ancient brick. Maybe this is the song of my life that will continue to rhyme with itself. Or maybe Grace will interrupt Karma.‡ I don’t know. But if I never get to experience a different kind of love or pain than rejection, that’s okay. If that’s my story – loving without being loved in return, hoping without ever having hope realized – I will live it as well as I can. 

I have a preference for how this life plays out, but I can’t control it. What I can control is what I do in it. To not give up in despair or give in to bitterness, but to love well. I don’t regret loving people, even those who do not love me in return. If anything, I only regret failing to love with more honesty, empathy, and courage. 

As self-indulgent and autobiographical as this field note is, I don’t want it to be about me. Each one of us has a long, personal history of pain, and we need all the love we can give. Whoever you are and whatever your story is, I want to love you better. I hope we meet soon. I will probably fall in love with you.

J.

*The title is blatantly plagiarized from a poetry collective by the same name. They’re amazing. Check them out. 

**Off to the Races, Lana Del Rey

†Drinking Buddies

‡Lifted from a quote by Bono

June 25, 2024