Love is not Love

A personal essay by Lindsay Taylor

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.

August 28, 2020. 

He was light, yet he was dark. Like the rippling waters of a disturbed lake, hidden beneath the mist of midnight. He was hard to see. It was only with time that I distinguished him, out from behind a persona he’d built like a wall. Little by little, a handhold here and a foothold there, I climbed it. Peered over the edge into the tempestuous abyss. He’d hidden himself with care, wielded a blinding light with skill, to shock the eyes before they could see clearly the man that stood in the shadows.

It wasn’t a marriage. Luckily, it wasn’t a marriage. Not in the truest sense, at least. What it was is an almost-marriage. A near escape. A dream shattered like broken glass; no way to gather the pieces without drawing blood. A broken engagement, as they say.

I’d like to think of myself as one with sound judgement. In literature, food, conversation. I trust myself to find the best hotels, the most thoughtful gifts, the most interesting perspectives. Even the best people. I thought I could see everyone with transparency. Yet I didn’t, couldn’t, see him. I saw only what I wanted to see. 

***

September 16, 2018.

My first impression of him was that he was conceited. He mistook me for someone else, asked me out, and I turned him down in quick succession. For me, that was the end. For him, it was just the beginning. My disinterest marked the challenge of a lifetime. 

He pursued me. Sought me out. Made me feel a confusing combination of flattered and embarrassed. He was beautiful, glazed over with sugar like a maraschino cherry. In the end, he won. I said yes. 

What followed was a typical story of falling in love. He walked me to my car, to my classes, and held my hand in public while I laughed at his jokes. We ran around like children, kissed, blushed, and smiled all the way home. I told him I didn’t want to be with anyone else. He told me he loved me. He told me that he wanted to marry me.

***

Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds,

January 3, 2014.

The moon was out, shadows slicing through the room from the open window. I’d curled myself privately in a corner, letting the moonlight caress my skin in the darkness. I clutched sonnet 116 to my heart as I whispered the words... “love is not love...” 

I’d heard the poem earlier that day and couldn’t seem to shake it. It had some kind of magic to it, sticking to me like pixie dust. 

I shaped the words with my mouth, filled them with the tremor of my voice, felt them reverberate off of the deepest chasms of my chest. I said them over and over and over again until they were as familiar to me as the beats of my own heart. I was seventeen, a senior in high school, and that was the first poem I’d memorized just for the way it tasted.

***

January 2, 2020.

There comes a day in every girl’s life where she graduates from the Cinderellas and Snow Whites and enters the world of Mrs. Dalloway and Beneatha Younger. I’m older now, I’ve passed that threshold, so I understand. But I still wonder why no one told me the change was coming. My mother read me fairytales but never said, “Cinderella’s life didn’t end at her wedding.” 

Did it?

***

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark

May 14, 2019.

The shop was cold and quiet. A muted hush filled the air as the door swung shut behind us, like we’d entered a museum or a funeral home, but the plush displays that should have held corpses were covered instead with diamonds. The rocks caught the light just as they’d been positioned to, little prisms dancing with light’s colors on the ceiling. 

We wandered and sampled. I liked this and not that. I crafted a ring that was entirely my own, chose the diamond that would sit in it myself, memorizing its imperfections like the freckles in my own eyes. I studied its construction, triangle leaning on triangle, and made it mean something: him, me, and God. What a marriage should be.

***

July 18, 2019.

I twisted the ring on my finger like the spinning lights of a siren, front to back to front to back, light and dark and light and dark. I’d parked at his apartment but I didn’t go inside. Instead I circled the block once, twice, three times. 

I’d made no backup plans. If my life went up in flames, what was I going to do with the ashes?

***

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

July 24, 2019. 

Four days until I said goodbye to the man I’d called “the love of my life.” Thirty days until I did not, in fact, get married. Sixty days since he’d given me that ring. 

We spent the day planning our wedding, time was ticking and we had to get invitations out the door. We drove to our venue and practiced our first dance. All I could think was, “If I mess this up, he’ll blame me forever.”

We got home when it was already dark. A group of people were setting off fireworks a block away, and we walked over to watch them because we had nothing to say to each other. He saw a distant acquaintance so we stopped to chat. The acquaintance teased him: “What do you even do for her? Do you get her flowers? Do you write her notes? Dude, you just need to be less boring.” My fiance prided himself on being fun, so he took offense and turned it instead on me: “I’m not the boring one.”

I could have cried, but we weren’t alone. I let the shock render me frozen. The acquaintance backed away slowly like he’d seen a bear; my fiance shouted after him: “If we break up it’s on you!”

It was a nice try, but he couldn’t shift the blame. It was squarely on him, and we all knew it.

***

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

July 16, 2019.

He wanted to postpone the wedding. 

He told me: “I’m scared.” And: “I don’t want our children to be short.” “You could whiten your teeth.” “I’m worried you’ll be like your mom.” “Did you do anything over the break besides read?” “I’m just not sure we bring out the best in each other.” “I think you’re a social liability.” “Can you please not do that half smile thing? Smile or don’t smile. The in-between isn’t cute.” “I’m afraid that pregnancy will be hard for you.” “I just don’t want it to be hard.” “I’m usually drawn to collegiate athletes or girls going to med school.” “I know you’ll be a good mom, and sometimes I wonder if I care about anything else anymore.” “Maybe it’s just the situation, but why don’t you smile more?” 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I used to be funny,” I remember telling him, “where did I go? I don’t even feel like myself anymore.” He agreed.

***

July 28, 2019.

He was my star. I set myself by him. Moved only when he moved, shined only when he said I could. It was too clear to ignore anymore. I couldn’t explain it away. I had a choice before me: save the relationship, or save myself. 

I chose myself.

***

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

April 22, 2020.

My idea of love has changed since I was a child. I used to think it would be a fairytale, now I think it will be a fight. The kind of fight that’s worth it in the end, but has its ups and downs along the way. I’ve found it in other places: in my family, in my friends who’ve stuck with me through it all, in the person I’ve become. Love is something you’d walk through fire for-- something you do walk through fire for. 

So, yeah, our “love” didn’t last. But I think that means it wasn’t really love. True love, by definition, is there for you in the end, so it’s not something you can ever actually lose. All you can lose is what you thought was love, only to find something sweeter farther down the road.

***

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

April 2, 2020.

When all I had was ashes I couldn’t imagine my future as anything but burnt. However, forest fires have a way of clearing the brush to make room for more beautiful growth. It takes time, sure, but Father Time is a soldier, and no matter what happens under the drop of each boot, he keeps marching on. 

Time did pass. Like Mrs. Dalloway’s clock tower counting down the hours to nothing, I watched the hands on my own clock move in their neverending dance hour after hour, day after day, week after week. The sun crossed the sky, the moon moved slowly through its phases. Everyone told me I would heal with time, and I guess I was lucky, because time was all I had. 

It happened slowly, like the sunrise behind the horizon. I began to open my windows and let the morning light cross the length of my room. Waking from a long slumber, I stretched and got out of bed. I let sunshine enter my heart again, and I saw that there was more to find on my own than I could ever have found with him.

***

October 25, 2020.

It’s a bit late, already dark, and I’m still not sure that I really want to do this. But there it is, a knock at the door, and it’s too late to go back now. The face on the other side of the door when I open it isn’t one I’ve seen before, at least not in person. I grab a jacket and he walks me to his car. I’m surprised when he opens my door and makes sure I’m good to go. “Yeah, I’m good,” I say. And I am.

I’ve realized that while relationships sometimes fall apart, love lasts. Love is a force that doesn’t give up when obstacles are placed in front of it. It only grows stronger, shining through the best of humanity, showing itself in every opened door and shoulder to cry on. Love is a force bigger than any one of us. Love fights on.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Photo credit: Photo by Gabriela Palai, licensed by Pexels.