Mania.
Turns out
I don’t actually love you
I just really
Really
Really
Want you
To keep
As mine
(The Greeks call it mania).
I took a year off dating.
It was hard, but it was necessary.
After being a hopelessly romantic child who was also a bit of a late bloomer, I had been in and out of relationships for most of my young adult life.
And one day, I finally had enough.
I’d just broken up with a boyfriend who I had been living with. He was, by far, the kindest man I had ever allowed to get close to me, but we just didn’t work. And I was devastated.
So why, then, did I find myself involved with someone else not so long after?
I had been walking the spiritual path for awhile, trying to get my bearings after eschewing the Christian church while I pursued a degree in science, and then realizing that maybe science didn’t have all the answers, either. Spirituality felt like the next logical step, a canvas where I could splatter out all my various learnings, blending some together and removing some completely.
Enter the spiritual-guy-who’s-subtley-manipulative-but-“really-just-wants-to-help-you.”
It was a short and intense affair. He was quite a gifted psychic with a heavy backstory, and I was an empath, cracked open and eager to learn about something, anything, that could help me make sense of things. I remember feeling simultaneously blessed and unnerved by this union; he was so perceptive and could read me like a book (which felt like a gift to someone who had trouble expressing herself, but looking back now I’m so uncomfortable with how comfortable he was accessing my energy whenever he pleased, and with how non-existent my own boundaries were).
I got myself out of that situation fairly rapidly, but it shook me how quickly I got taken in, looking for a safe place. I told myself then and there, “listen up, miss: no more of this.”
So I committed to a year of celibacy.
And it was hard (did I say this already?).
In that year, I learned a lot about myself. I struggled with loneliness, and yet I started to see the true depth of love that surrounded me in places I simply hadn’t thought to look before.
I had parents who loved me and let me move back in with them after my breakup.
I had friends who supported me and held space for me to be myself in every way.
I had a mentor and a community that I gained through an exploration of energetic healing.
And I had myself, who signed me up to become a Reiki master, who took me to Costa Rica, who let my curiosity around psychedelics and philosophy and psychology lead me into deeper healing and self-awareness.
I had it all.
Except a man. I didn’t have one of those. And I still wanted one. Badly.
Shortly after my year was up, I made a grand declaration to the Universe: I am ready to date. Get at me.
Now, in my last article, Apotheosis, I mentioned being careful what you wish for, because you might just get more than you bargained for…
Yes.
You might.
You might, let’s say, have a handsome stranger wander into your store the very next day and ask you to dinner. You might, let’s say, reconnect with an old flame, the one you never quite got over. You might, let’s say, get a random Snapchat from your first serious boyfriend. You might, let’s say, get a message from that super charismatic guy you and your best friend accidentally went on a three person Tinder date with a year ago. You might, let’s say, get hit up by that super hot older man you’ve been scoping out for years…
And you might, let’s say, have all this happen in under a week.
Well, my darlings, my poor head and heart and all the other bits of me were thrilled. And confused. And overwhelmed. And I made some choices.
Not great ones.
But ones that led to some lessons that I wish I’d learnt the first umpteen hundred times, but I didn’t, and here we are.
The ancient Greeks had many different words for love:
Eros – romantic, passionate love
Philia – affectionate love
Agape – selfless, universal love
Storge – familial love
Ludus – playful love
Pragma – enduring love
Philautia – self love
Mania — obsessive love
And it pains me to say, dear ones, that I had spent most of my life fixated on this strange blend that not only toed the line between eros and mania, but confused it with it’s brothers and sisters and warped and perverted the whole Love family.
Learning about these different types of love, these different forms of the formless, has quite simply changed my whole perspective. Being able to identify and recognize the different ways love plays into your existence is a critical skill, and having the language now to express it feels like a godsend.
And for that, I am damn grateful, for a life without love in it’s many forms is a tough life indeed.
I wrote this particular poem about the old flame and the handsome older man, both of whom I was seeing simultaneously (I told you the choices were, perhaps, questionable). I was very open and honest with them both, and while I felt great about this newfound sense of “here’s what I’m doing, take it or leave it,” I also found myself in this awful headspace, full of self-doubt, fear, jealousy.
And sitting with that was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I could have done.
It’s not easy to call yourself out on your own bullshit. It’s not easy to see where your blindspots are (by virtue of them being blindspots), especially when it comes to yourself. It’s not easy to admit that maybe you are contributing to your own misery.
But I was.
And I am.
And I will.
And the most supportive thing I can do for myself in those times is to hold myself, to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with myself.
To write.
To walk.
To play.
To talk.
Philautia, my darlings, philautia.
