Love Outside of Survival

I have lost count of the amount of times in the past little while that I’ve said, “is this even real?”, in both a positive and negative connotation. This treasured life we lead is messy and hard, but at its fundamental core, so very simple: to love and be loved. The even harder truth as we get older, is that love isn’t enough anymore. When we set foot as young things, star-eyed and wistful, love was the thing that would help us conquer anything and everything. Love would pull us through, help us grow, and remember at the root of it all how easy it all actually is.

This thing. Love. This thing. Overinflated, under-inflated. This thing that we all desperately looked for in others, and failed to look for in ourselves. This thing that we all waxed poetic about but didn’t really fully understand.

It isn’t enough.

To have adult relationships, friendships, acquaintances, lovers, partners… is to remember how much more goes into nurturing mutually beneficial relationships. Compromise, understanding, empathy, negotiation. We have infused this ‘ride-or-die’ mentality into every aspect of our lives. Scarcity. Rooted in a system that at its core is designed to leave us feeling empty.

We have taught ourselves and by extension, those around us, that to love is to lose parts of ourselves. To love is to give up parts of ourselves. To love is to also, lose.

When our hands are clenched in fists, there is no room to receive.

The truth is, when we remember that our hearts as humans are overwhelmingly big (and oh, so tender) we can cultivate space for a love of others that is rooted in reciprocity, understanding and kindness.

When we see into ourselves first, we meet others where they’re at, not where we want/need/hope for them to be.

For decades, I have searched the barren landscape of myself in other people. I have looked to friends, lovers, and partners to reflect back to me what I needed to know for myself first: that I am worthy of receiving, and that when I receive, I develop the capacity to give.

Over time, through what feels like a tender vulnerability, I have slowly started to learn (and unlearn) all the ways that I both give and receive love. I now urge myself to cultivate relationships of any kind to root not in a place of survival, but in a space of conscious choice. Where we return to each other, because it feels good, and because we want to.

This is the kind of love I observed here.

The kind that leaves your lungs depleted of air not because you’re suffocating but because you’ve held your breath for so long bearing witness to a moment. A series of moments. Unique and tender connections that somehow simultaneously exist in conjunction with each other and on their own.

When I first tried to understand the unique dynamic in this constellation, Sam said, “I don’t know, it just works.” And truly, it does. There’s a symbiosis that is hard to capture in words. A trust that is hard to imagine until you find yourself among it. A kind of love that somehow holds you AND elevates you. A kind of love that I honestly didn’t know existed.

It’s a kind of love that recognizes where love falls short, and where everything else needs to step in. A trust. A conversation. An understanding. An evolution. It’s stepping into a space consciously, willingly, everyday so long as it’s mutually beneficial.

It’s the root of choosing to stay.

“I grew up riding horses. And the first thing you learn, after how to get on, is how much it hurts when you fall.

Time and again, you hit the dirt, and the wall, and the fence, and time and again you are forced very brutally to learn that the more you tense up the harder that impact hits.

Sitting in the constellation, time and again, I look around the room, and fear rises up in my belly. I’ve never felt safe in my big, bigoted family. I’ve never been safe in a crowd.

Time and again, I clench.

Time and again, I ask myself - we all ask ourselves, and each other - to release. To open the hands that are desperately trying to keep all our scared shattered pieces together and say, hey; here I am; I’m a little messy sometimes (a lot messy, often, really); can we love and care for these pieces together?

Time and again, we fall.

Time and again, we trust.

And time and again, as we release the fear, that impact hurts a little less.”

— Sam X Bruce

“Covid has us all feeling so distant from the dynamics that were so valuable to our emotional buoyancy. I for one have been feeling into creative ways to fill my own cup, to fill my cup with distance still there, and to allow the relationships that I do still tangibly experience to fill my cup in new ways.

Leaning into relationship anarchy has made this a wonderful thing. For me, at its core, this is about the pure and terrifying notion that every interaction with a person is a separate, individual brick, stacked into a sturdy and lengthy wall that supports and protects me.

Taking what people can offer at any time, seeing it as enough (assuming it doesn’t cause any harm to me), and being grateful for it, is an interwoven practice that I have struggled with for a long time. My brain marinates in a potent concoction of anxiety and expectations, when left to its own devices. And yet, somehow, I’m being described as “chill” and “go with the flow” and “present” by the partners in my life lately.

Because I am learning how to love in fragments. Because these beautiful moments of connection don’t have to be plentiful in order to be powerful.

And, not insignificantly, because I am lucky enough and strong enough to allow only the best humans into my life.”

— Sam X Bruce