What I want most is to be seen, really.
We all know the famous Jo March quote:
Jo March: If he asked me again, I think I would say yes. Do you think he’ll ask me again?
Marmee March: But do you love him?
Jo March: I care more to be loved. I want to be loved.
Marmee March: That is not the same as loving.
I think this really encapsulates my feelings about love at the moment. Obsessing over this idea of romance is all I really have in my track record (or experience i.e. lack thereof). My mind is probably responsible for my many failed attempts at a romantic partner. That and the overflow of boys who think themselves capable of anything real.
By that, I mean real romance. Do you know what I really mean? A wife and her husband and the grocery store flowers. Tiana, and Prince Naveen. Anastasia and the Royal Baker from Cinderella II. There’s a Joan Didion quote from “Slouching Towards Bethelem” that explains my nonsense perfectly,
“As it happened, I didn’t grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear.” — From her collections of essays “Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).
Obviously, I’m young and that kind of love takes time, which I am aware that I am not short of. By all means, I think I am preaching to the choir when I complain about my lack of extraordinary romantic experiences. I mean Joan Didion complains about it herself while in her mid-20's and I haven’t even reached that kind of landmark yet (again still beautifully young). Yet, somehow, in my obvious naivety, these facts are still incredibly sad.
In my feeble attempts to self-soothe, I’d like to think it’s only a natural thing for a girl to dream of being loved, as Jo perfectly puts it. That may not be very feminist of me, to say such an assumption, so I guess I’ll say this: It’s only natural for anyone to dream of being loved. And remember we are talking about the real thing here. No creepy obsession or untamable lust. While those are things that are lovely to hypothetically write about, they are unnerving in reality. For one wouldn’t want someone to love blindly, only wholly.
Just like my last post “Look at me and love me.” I meant that extremely literally. At least in my experience, I've had boys spill their deepest darkest secrets, make me dinner, and gleefully smile when I would swallow and console them for the pain they’ve supposedly endured in their lives. They loved a girl who would listen, inconspicuously find their favorite songs, and was mysteriously submissive. But it wasn’t me. I thought I had to play this game when courting someone. That in order to become the subject of his desire, I needed to play the part of this girl (whoever she is??), who could love blindly, and exist insignificantly. Except, obviously I don’t want someone to fall in love with this weirdly sexist constructed idea of me. I didn’t want someone to look at me and think “mysterious”, I wanted them to look at me and think “Nadia”, because that’s who I am.
Look at me!!! See me, for everything I really am, all the rotten and all the good. Love me for real, baby. Just like the Westerns, just like Joan Didion wanted. Buy me a horse, show me your favorite bend in the river. Ask me to marry you near the Joshua trees. I know this all may be entirely beside the point but you get the idea.
Anyways, I still find the love I do have in my life extraordinarily sweet. I love my best friend, who really is wise and witty, and unwaveringly kind. Someone who listens to my epiphanies about oranges and rain. I don’t know. There isn’t much that can really be said about all of it really. Another famous quote from “Emma” by Jane Austen goes “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
But I have something from her to share because she said something so incredibly genius the other day.
She told me real love felt like our friendship.
I think that is one of the best and most profound things anyone has ever said to me.
The other loves in my life are my family. Not much to say about them either, only that there is also something beautifully absolute about the ties of blood, and relation. In my case, I thank the stars on my tapestry every day, that the love from them has always been unconditional.
To end, there is so much in the world, all the big, and all the small. I am grateful for all of it, angry about some, and sad about most. There are few places where I feel completely seen and loved. But I think, or at least I’m trying to, appreciate the “other” that life has to offer (by this I mean, and I know I’m being painfully explanatory, life without romantic love is still life!)
And Joan, maybe I’ll find my own river bend, where flowers grow, not cotton, and I’ll probably just sit there for a while.
That’s all.
— nadia mysteria x.
