Love [Again]

25 ott 2024

I realised something a while ago and it's a bit… eh I don't know. I realised I love everyone, maybe, probably, most likely, definitely, and it's causing a bit of trouble. I take that back, it's causing difficulty. Loving everyone isn't causing difficulty, realising I do is. It's causing difficulty because I need to make clarifications and I look at the long list of clarifications to be made and I just go sigh. I've been talking about love far too much for far too long. There's so much to go back and clarify.

I haven't been precise and I know I haven't. I know I haven't in the moment I lack precision, but I let it go. I betray my sense of reason in that way and I let it go and now, I must make up for it.

I have love, true love [ha "true love"], not in the romantic sense but in the isolated sense. True as in the most rudimentary form of a material. True as in the most stripped back presentation of an entity. True as in raw and unaccompanied by anything else, any other thoughts, constructs, or principles. I have love and then I have the stand-in, love, colloquial love. We'll call it love. Love and love. I have love and then I have love.

I love everyone. This is distinct from loving everyone. I have love for everyone. I do not have love for everyone. Do you understand me? I love you all.

The problem— correction— the difficulty I'm having is knowing I have used love and love interchangeably. If I'm fair, it's usually not intentionally, but I realise in the following moments my love has been taken for love or my lack of love has been assumed a lack of love, and I don't always go back to clarify. I refrain from clarifying usually to the comfort of whoever I'm speaking with, but if I follow my own reason, my own belief, I do not genuinely think this is to the benefit of anyone.

But that's not my call, is it. It is not my call to decide the benefits of everyone. I'm still learning how to honour truth and others' agency. Do I tell them what they do not wish to know? I think not. I usually decide not. Truth will be okay. It will continue to exist regardless. It doesn't need me and it doesn't need force.

Anyway, on love. I've always been this way and I've described this understanding of the world and what lives around me in a variety of ways from my earliest memories of speaking and my earliest streams of thought. I've occasionally explained fractions of this way to others, very briefly, but I did not know what I was describing. I did not know it was called love. I've learned this recently. Italian taught me, actually, but we'll get back to that. Actually, before we leave it, I've come to find a lot of congruence between my own logical reasoning, my own understandings and the language of Italian, the logic of Italian. There are of course disagreements, but I like this relationship. I'm enjoying the reasoning. Italian has been teaching me English.

I've told people there's the fundamental respect I have for everyone under all conditions that does not go away, and then there is respect that is given, retracted, earned, and lost. I've said I want everyone well. I've said that is easy, to want everyone well. I've said I could take interest in anyone. I could want to understand anyone. I could be thoroughly curious about anyone. That's easy. I'm curious because you exist. There's something to know because you exist. I've learned discernment and energy management, but to want to know you? That's easy. I've said I don't really know what it's like to desire someone's suffering. When someone hurts me, I want space and I want them well. I want them settled. They usually seem unsettled and I want them settled. I want them well. I've said I hope she's okay. This is in response to threats. I hope she's okay. There are some fundamental things I'd like for everyone, and there's a degree of okayness somewhere there. I hope they're okay. I want them well. To want to know what it would take to care for someone? Easy. As I've said, I don't want anything from you, not even your love. Love is an offer, not a demand, not a request. I've said I care about you. I want you well. I'm invested, however remotely, in whether or not you are well. And any efforts made or interactions will consider how to keep or allow you to be well.

Anyway, I want you well and Italian tells me this is love. I don't know. I could see it. Ti voglio bene. I want you well and For you, there is love.

This happened a few months ago [weeks ago?], maybe in August, this realisation. Ti voglio bene. I want you well. It's the only time I've ever felt love. Ever understood it. What I mean is, I've previously said I do not have a need or present desire to be loved. It doesn't cross my mind. When I said this, I believe I was talking about love. Remember, distinct from love. When I said this, I believe I was describing the lack of feeling I have when I'm told I am loved. It doesn't mean anything to me. What I mean is, that word doesn't correlate to anything for me. Love is love. And what is love? [I have a similar difficulty with the word "sorry", it's so isolated in its meaning and usage in the English language, but I may've had a discovery about this while recently braiding so it kind of means something now. Italian helped me decode this too. I tell you, Italian is teaching me English. Only 20-plus years in, but that's okay.]

What I mean is, I'm not sure I have any idea what another being would have to do or say for me to feel loved and this is different from knowing I'm loved. This is something I said. I said this over a year prior to claiming I don't need to be loved. I've learned to have a certain respect for other people's deductions of their own feelings so if someone tells me they love me, I'll take it at face value unless I have discernible reasons to think otherwise. Cognitively, I'll accept — I simply enter it in my system as a piece of information — and say I know I'm loved, but I don't know what it's like to feel loved and I don't know what it would take to feel that. This is something I said. I believe this is the love I claimed to not need.

It wasn't until Ti voglio bene that I felt love. I feel deeply for others, but when I thought about what would happen if someone told me they want me well, I finally felt love. This was a few months ago? Weeks ago. Maybe in August. I felt love. And it was only hypothetical, but I felt it, for the first time.

So I'd said I do not have a need or desire to be loved. This was under a very specific context, but again, I lacked precision and I let it go. What I meant was, the sentence "I love you", in English, has never had great impact on me. I don't know what it means. I know what I mean when I say I love you. When I hear "I love you", I don't know what it means. I had a conversation about this where I explained it's quite similar to my thoughts on remorse and fear. If someone says "I feel bad", I don't know what that means. I know, quite literally, what it means, but I know very little else. Both remorse and fear of consequences quite literally may "feel bad" in your body. I don't know what you want me to take from that, and so I take nothing. I don't know what you mean. "Love" is a similar linguistic stand-in. It's usually used to communicate pre-existing qualities of a relationship. It's a shorthand. We don't say I want you well I think of you when we are not speaking I think of how to care for you how to put you at ease how to support your fulfilment I think of your joy and make for its pursuit I make it a priority I think of your expansion and growth and I'm in awe of you I want to share time indefinitely with you I want to know you I want you safe I want you well. We say I love you. It's a shorthand.

I had said I don't need to be loved. I have no desire to specifically hear I am loved. It doesn't occur to me. I believe what I mean is, I don't need shorthands. I typically do not understand them. If I am not aware of what you are giving me a shorthand for, your shorthand has no meaning. It is only a word, a series of characters, etchings on a page, a sound. I don't need "love" because what is it anyway. But well? You want me well? Hm. That means something.

In this conversation I had where I compared love to remorse and fear and "I feel bad", we learned I might just need precision. This is more than liking it. I feel because precision. I need it. Otherwise, I don't know what you mean.

There was still a conversation on whether I needed all of what "love" could be a stand-in for, but that was when I discovered I may not know the difference between not needing something and living happily fulfilled without it. Can you tell the difference between surviving and living happily fulfilled without it?

I don't know where I'm going, I've really gotten away from the point. All to say:

1. I [might] love everyone I [might] love most everything that lives (I know I do, but somehow that's a bit of a frightening admission, it's not frightening it's true, it's frightening to say— it's the kind of thing I've been critiqued on before).
2. When I say I love you, it is always true that I love you. It may or may not be true that I love you.
   1. Because of this, clarifications also need to be made about unconditional love, which I've had a lot of critiques of before, but I realise now I was likely critiquing unconditional love while expressing unconditional love. I say this now even a bit begrudgingly, as "unconditional" makes me uncomfortable. I have a strange resistance to this word. I think I'd like to tell myself I reserve the right to have conditions, and yet, in 20-plus years the conditions for breaking love have yet to arise. Love, not love.
   2. Details of love will come at another time.
3. Ti voglio bene. I have found an expression for my love that means love. I can't begin to tell you how deeply I felt when I thought on Ti voglio bene. When it clicked. When I even thought about telling my loved ones Ti voglio bene how much grander my feelings for them were. How much more they overcome me. The words I know are inadequate.
4. I don't know what I need, truthfully. I mean, I do, but I don't know. I'm happy. Not much comes up in thinking of need when I'm happy. I just feel.
5. We never actually got to this, but the fact I love everyone may have a little something to do with my lack of differentiation between "romantic", "platonic", "familial", etc. love. I don't think one causes the other, but there may be some kind of notable relationship between loving all and knowing and feeling all love to be the same.

I think that's all for now. Until the next time on love.

17:15:47

You know, I don't know this to be true. I can accept I love most everything that lives. I don't know if the other is true.

I think what I know of myself is either I want you well or your existence is as affecting as if you did not exist to begin with. There is nothing or I love you. It seems always one of the two. To be void or loved.

I suppose because void is nothing, in the end, all I see is love.

17:22:21

17:51:30

I say this knowing it is still true I have fundamentals that exist for all.