Notes On Love- Letter 9

A common thing people often say is “Be your own soulmate” and I have always found that insensitive.

It isn’t specifically cruel or brash but it is dismissive, like a slammed door in the face. It carries an expectation that you should tend to your fears alone. That you should dress your own wounds with plastered hands, and give yourself warmth from your cold feet.

They are not comforting lullabies. They are condescending tones in their softness because they scorn you for needing, and they frame longing as a flaw. They treat desire for companionship as a weakness fallen into rather than a truth to honor.

When I hear them, and I hear them often. I feel like I am being told that I must be enough for myself in every way and I must make do with whatever I gain, without ever reaching a leap of faith of something or someone beyond me.

It’s catastrophic. It’s unfair.

But beneath that overcorrection lies a truth I have come to realize: no love is substitute for another.

You can have the devotion of family, be so deeply, eternally, unconditionally loved and still feel an overwhelming ache bring you to your knees. Because deep down, you still want someone you can call on a whim, someone to tell every dilemma to before you have even organized your thoughts.

You relish at the thought of whispering to another soul sweet nothings. Someone who is not obliged to love you, but does, freely, willingly, without falling or hesitation.

Likewise, you can have the eternal affection of that lover, his hand resting in your palm, his hoarse voice softened by care, and still feel something missing.

What is missing is the coax of a friend. Because romantic love is not the same as the affiliating understanding of a true friend who listens without possession. A friend who knows your depth. Who recognizes your presence without the weight of expectation.

The tree of love doesn’t collapse into one form because its branches, multiplies and meets in different ways.

bell hooks wrote that love is a combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility. By that definition, love demands relationship. It demands perspective. It demands the presence of another consciousness.

It does not thrive in isolation.

We need these branches from the different loves in our life. They grow different. They may arrive unexpectedly. But when they are healthy, they feel expansive.

All the different loves in our lives transcends one another. To expect one to carry the weight of all is foolish. It is a failed design. It brews quiet chaos. It turns affection into pressure and longing into shame. It leads to a river where the soul will find no rest.

I have always known this. But deep down, I did not want it to be true. I believed, with all in me, that my self confidence was airtight. It would hold me, but my soul needs a hand. Souls require companionship. It needs witnesses.

The world thrives on that. Maybe that is why love is the centerfold of the universe. Everything we do, we do it to be just loved a little more.

We attain success for the love of recognition.
We cultivate confidence for the love of ourselves.
We pursue happiness for the love of a future we hope more than anything will ground us safely.

But there is more. There has always been more. And it does not only need to come from us.

The most gracious thing about love is that it comes from places we could never build alone. It arrives in quick happenstance. It softens what self-sufficiency hardens. It fills spaces we did not know required another presence.

Self-love steadies you. It teaches you what you deserve. It protects you from accepting less.

But it was never meant to replace being seen.
It was never meant to replace being chosen.
It was never meant to replace being held.

No love replaces another.

They exist side by side.
They nourish different parts of us.
And we are allowed to want them all.

These are my Notes on Love, a February letter series, written every two days of the month. To the versions of ourselves we carry, the selves we’ve outgrown, the lessons we’re learning to unlearn, and the many ways we make room for love lives. If any of this lingers with you, please subscribe.