Hello friends, friendettes, & frixnds! So funny thing about this update in pawticular, i had it already finished and ready to be posted. But apparently something must've gone extremely wrong in the autosave purrocess, so all of that writing is just completely gone. Lovely. I'm a little pissed about it but not enough to just completely discard this post idea, nope. I'm willing to put my purride aside and just rewrite everything I had to say, even if that lost draft was really, really fucking good.
Anyway, for the purrpose of this blog just assume that for the most pawrt every time I discuss 'love' I mean it in the romantic sense, although we will delve into platonic love later.
Also for the sake of my sanity I'm dropping the cat pun quirk. It's purrfectly pawesome and all but the red squiggly lines are pissing me off.
Lately I've been listening to a lot of love songs and my old crushing playlists because love has been a topic that's been on my mind since about late May. Mainly just to recreate that feeling, since I kind of miss it. It's like the auditory equivalent of delivering 40 electric shocks to your head to get you to remember something. But it really got me thinking about what exactly love *is*, at least to me. It's a difficult question to answer honestly, and I don't really know if I can. But I can try, that much is sure.
Love is a lot of things for one. But for me, I think love is a feeling of intense devotion, care, and want. When you're in love with someone you want to spend all of your time with them, want to do everything with them, and a whole lot of other stuff like that. Kisses, make-outs, and other things that are exclusive to romance I guess. It's a fun feeling, it involves a lot of affection that can't be captured properly in just the label of a 'friend' but can be aptly described when you call someone your 'partner.'
But see, the difference between platonic and romantic love is just something that's hard to describe without saying "when you feel it you'll know the difference," because that's an impawssibly vague non answer. I mean, sure, I could sit here and say that when you're in love you want to spend your whole life with this individual, but I could also want to do that with a friend. "You'd want to raise kids together!" Helping my friends out with their kids is also something I'd be down for! I think the indicator that distinguishes romance from platonic feeling is the urges. I mean, just how comfortable are you with kissing your friends? Yeah, didn't think so. But that's what love is to me I guess.
But see, romance is something that I'm usually adverse to because I'm the kind of person who enjoys romance in theory more than in practice. I like the warm, fuzzy feelings I get when I listen to a playlist I made about being in love, but if someone confesses their feelings to me I think I would shrivel and die. Sometimes I yearn, but more for the idea of love I've made in my head than for a specific person. I like how being in love makes me feel like anything is possible, it makes me feel like I'm right where I'm supposed to be. But if I had to be in another romantic relationship I think I would just feel massively uncomfortable the whole time, I don't know why. I think that much romantic devotion to me and affection for me just generally makes me extremely uncomfortable, I don't really know why. Romance isn't something that I really need in my life so much as I like thinking about it sometimes, I could never see myself being the type of person who's like "oh my god I NEED a girlfriend!!!" Trust me, I already have enough of those in my life. I’m fine being “alone” in the field of romance. And besides, I used to be that kind of person anyway, so I think that’s why nowadays I tend to stray away from romance.
As a wee, young baby (8th grader) I dealt with a heartbreak so bad that I ended up becoming really desperate to recreate how badly I was crushing on my then ex that I ended up fucking up a few friendships along the way. Genuinely horrible time to be alive, I am so glad that’s not me anymore. But that experience led me to value my friendships a lot more than I did before, and they’re some of the most important and valuable relationships I have in my life. Without my friends I would be a very, very different person I feel. I love all of them very much, as much as I love to say it. I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world. I guess having a lot of friends I love is better than having a partner, and it’s not to say that any of the friendships I have replace the romantic need I have, god no. It’s just to say that I have so much platonic love in my heart that the “romantic need” is practically nonexistent.
I’ve pondered a lot on if this means I’m aromantic or something, but I don’t know and honestly I don’t really care. My sexual orientation isn’t something I think about all that much, and why would I? I choose to go wherever my heart or dick tells me to, and that’s that. Putting a label on who or what exactly I’m attracted down to the very microlabel to feels like it would be such a tedious process that I don’t even bother with it. So like, so what if I was aromantic? It wouldn’t really change a thing other than going like “oh, neat.” and then moving on with my life. I just don’t really think about it all that much. But contrary to me being “unlabeled,” I actually love labels. At least queer labels anyway. See the awesome thing about queer labels is not only are they descriptors but those descriptors come with history behind them. They’re words but also not *just* words, and that is just so awesome to me. Certain subcultures and labels in the queer community are so rich with history and pride (pun intended,) I love all of it so much. It’s so lovely.
But I’m getting off topic. Love. Right. Loooove. Well recall earlier when I said "I prefer romance in theory and less in practice"? Yeah, I don't really like it in practice. One might even say hate it. Feeling like you're in love with someone is usually so awesome but the moment it's reciprocated, or someone who you're not interested in suddenly develops feelings for you, it's kind of like flat trumpets. I don't know, someone being that intensely interested in me romantically just makes me super uncomfortable for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. But there's levels to it, if someone's just casually interested in me then I'll be able to turn them down and move on but if it's, like, and intense crush then I feel even more uncomfortable. Apolocheese for making it homestuck, but I'm basically like Jake English in Act 6 trying to handle Jane & Dirk's romantic feelings at the same time. On one hand, he was definitely in the wrong for ghosting Dirk and pretending he didn't know how Jane felt about him, but on the other hand I can see why he did it and there's a part of me that probably would've done the same. I like my space! Jeez! I don't like the pressure that comes with having to reciprocate someone's feelings. And even if someone were to date me, I just don't think they're ready to handle everything that comes with being with me. See, there's a difference between how I am with different people, and god knows how I act around people I'm romantically interested in isn't godawful. But the amount of vulnerability that you have to give in that kind of relationship isn't something I'm very comfortable with. Like I said, I don't think anyone can or needs to handle allat. I'm content dealing with it on my own, or with a therapist.
But that's about it, I think that's all I had to say on the topic. OH YEAH, and today's Karkat's birthday. So happy birthday to him, I guess.
This is malik, signing out.
