A Week and a Half

I guess that's not too bad to wait between blog entries. I could probably post daily, but I'd expect the quality to go down with the increase in post rate, making it akin to a Facebook Status Update - something I'm not fond of either.

No one needs to know every little thought I have. It's bad enough that the people I know hear the drivel that spews from my lips in person, although I'm told that it's sometimes pleasant drivel. I'd like to think that writing this stuff down gives me a few moments or minutes or hours to contemplate what I'm trying to communicate and most days it does. Right now, though, I'm streaming consciousness and drinking coffee.

After the journal post, I thought of a few things to write about, like my love for haiku writing and reading, why a single man was capable of adding some 1300+ words to the English language and these days people generally use only about twice that number daily, or a review of Godzilla which Tabitha and I saw on Friday. I'll probably do those topics at some point or another, but there's something else I've had on my mind lately. Love.

Yeah, as sappy as it sounds, I've been thinking about love a lot more recently and what that too-simple four letter word means to me. Part of love has always been, for me at least, ensuring that those I care for are in good spirits and health, perhaps not fiscally solvent but able to keep their heads just above water. There are many of my friends for whom I feel this love and if you've eaten at my place I hope you've felt this love and who have reciprocated in turn. It's a deep, warm, supportive feeling that lets you sleep like a baby.

Infatuation, though, is what most people think of when someone says they're in love. The crush. There's nothing like that sensation when you've got it and once it's gone, it's make-or-break time for whatever relationship has been woven as a result. The thing is, everyone wants that sense of infatuation and sometimes you find it or it finds you and it's not for the person it should be with. But sometimes it is... and it's amazing.

The impatience, anticipation of speaking to or seeing that person, watching for signs they feel the same way about you, all of that is quite literally intoxicating and like any opiate will hook you like a five pound fish on twenty pound line. There's no wonder people hunger for that feeling. I get the butterflies in the stomach, the moon-eyes, a warm-fuzzy tightness across my shoulders, and an uncontrollable need to smile at absolutely nothing.

It's akin to visiting a theme park, getting dizzy on the teacups, feeling your stomach flop in the roller coaster, knowing that the haunted mansion is down that path and you can't wait to get to it. To perpetuate the metaphor, once you leave the theme park and those flip-flop feelings settle down, you have a choice to find a new high or a new equilibrium. That's a hard choice to make in the face of intensity, one that a lot of people have difficulty with myself included.

I adore my wife, it's my sincere hope that she knows this and believes it, feels it daily from me whether I'm there with her or absent. The feeling that when that person isn't with you or in proximity at the least, you feel like there's a part of you missing, that's the love I share with Tabs. I'll hear a joke and expect to hear her laugh, but she's not there and now I have to remember the joke to tell it to her later. Dedication, I call it; the kind of love that I think most people secretly wish for in a relationship with another person even when they're saying they want an infatuation.

What I've come to learn is that you need both. You need both infatuation and dedication, the former occasionally and the latter perpetually. Some people are lucky enough to have that with their partners and everyone else calls them lucky bastards. I count myself among that rare group and am constantly amazed at how lucky I got to have my best friend as my partner in life.

There's always going to be times when that sense of love is in short supply, but sometimes that's what it takes to remind you of why you're with a person and it's enough to set those butterflies fluttering.