I don’t fall in love. Not in the traditional sense anyway. Then again, it’s tough to know what is traditional along the blurred lines of today’s casual dating, or shall I say hook-up scene. In that case, I don’t date either, I don’t suppose many of us do, and so I don’t think many of us fall in love, because how can you when you’re too preoccupied with school, internships, careers, travel and just “figuring it out” – though not quite sure what it is we think we’ll find at 22, but they tell me it’s supposed to be ourselves. So then, a low-maintenance weekend rendez-vous is all you can manage, or care to give up your time for. So, I don’t fall in love because I’m selfish, and I live in a world where we are all conditioned to be selfish, it’s become a right of passage really, or maybe a privilege we, none of us deserve, but take at granted. In either case, I made a custom of spending my overnights with equally self-absorbed men, whom it is all the much easier to leave in the morning, neglect their calls, and fail to make plans past morning coffee, and even that small-talk scene is negotiable.
But then, I did fall into a springtime affair that the warm weather makes it all the much easier to direct into summer, where if anything, the heat keeps you from making any drastic changes. But, I didn’t just fall, not I’m much too calculated and closed off for such a dive, I chose to get involved, to prioritize a plus-one into my already compartmentalized days divided between the gym, class, work, friends, and a stream of other non-important things that still fell under me-time. My single balancing act, 12 hour non-stop days, was a far easier fit than the room another person, another life, a love takes.
See, a past experience had already shown me what I’d known all along, that love like God is bigger than you and me, and it happens fast, becomes too much, and just as quickly it’s gone. Such romance doesn’t belong in the present day, there’s no time to gamble on another uncertainty when you’re already in between school, jobs, or cities. So, we micromanage love like we schedule every other hour of our days. We never fall, no there’s far too many safety nets of our own making already set in place,. So, you never need to bounce back because you’ve already displaced yourself and appointed a time, level and limit for love and will reorganize accordingly as with everything else.
memories stitched in denim 