It’s just… chillin’, you know?
Kickin’ it with somebody,
talkin’, makin’ MAD stupid jokes.
And like… not even wanting to go to sleep..
because then you might be without ’em for a minute.
And you don’t want that.
Love. I’ve been thinking about this quote form the incomparable Poussey since I binged the second season of Orange is the New Black this past weekend. I don’t think she could have been more on point. Samira Wiley, who plays Poussey, looks dead into the camera, with a look of complete and total sincerity, and you know that she believes it just as much as her character does. In fact, she seems to will you, the audience, to believe it, too. So that’s what I believe.
Loving someone is being able to laugh, and be ridiculous with someone; being completely comfortable. Love is in the ridiculous; whether that be the silliness of life, or the unbelievable suffering that comes with living. Both ridiculousnesses are vital for our world to work the way it does. But love is the constant between the to poles. Love is being able to sit in silence, without feeling the pangs of awkwardness that writhe in the pit of your stomach, but rather, letting the silence enrich the space between you. Silence, in fact, is important in love. Without it, life continues to move, and could damage the delicate nature that love is. Silence gives way to appreciation of things you couldn’t have known without it. Love is discovering new colors in the other person’s eyes.
Love is anxiety. Love is the excitement that spreads from the tips of the wings of the butterflies in your stomach to the tingling in the ends of your fingers and toes at the prospect of seeing them. Love is the pages and pages of unsent letters; confessions and secrets spelt out and spilt out in ink, crossed out words and cursed out smudges. Trying to find the words to say about or to or for the person you love is like trying to catch water; you’d think it’d be easy, you’d think you’ve done it before, but as soon as you have it in your grasp, it does what water will always do, it flows. The words to describe something so inherently perfect in your eyes, is not possible with the words that you have in your arsenal. But love is continuing to try, anyway. Love is, all at once, every cliche that’s ever been written about it, and too vast to be encapsulated by a few worn out phrases. It’s knowing that your love is theirs, even if theirs isn’t necessarily yours. Love is an ellipsis, waiting for an ending to a thought that was never really formed in the first place.
Love is the verses of a song, the parts that not everyone knows, the parts that lie somewhat forgotten between the well-known choruses, but the parts that are the most important. Love is not caring if the relationship is like one out of a novel or a movie or out of fantasy, because what you do have is infinitely better. Love is. Love is in the holding of hands. A simple thing that doesn’t really say much, but at the same time says everything you’ve ever wanted to know. Love is the perfection of every kiss. Love is listening. Love is pushing the limits of time, chasing the sun, daring it, begging it, not to rise, just so you can spend another hour or two together. Love is simplicity.
I can’t begin to scratch the surface of the immense depths of my thoughts about love and it’s place in my world, and the world at large. But, based on experiences, past, and present, I’ve come to realize that you can’t sum up what love is. If I could, I would agree with Poussey; missing a single, solitary moment of laughter and joy with that person, would be considered the greatest loss.
Clearly Tilting My Head 