the love that broke the spell I cast upon myself

how sometimes love will gut you, but it’s always worth it

1. “In many ways, unwise love is the truest love.” – Patrick Rothfuss

2. I feel foolish even calling it love. But I want to anyways.

3. Love doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. But that’s what we do when we hold back from classifying something as love, saving it only for e.g. our first love, maybe a special long-term relationship here and there, and the person we end up with. Identifying anything else along the way as merely lust. Something that you scoff at in a few years time when you’ve grown around the pain and say something like, ‘oh that?’ with a condescending chuckle.

But I don’t want to do that here.

For if I learned one thing it’s that love is a sensation that exists in moments. It’s always available to latch onto whenever we feel like it, but sometimes we forget that. Sometimes a person comes into your orbit and your connection dusts your heart off and you go back to your separate lives and when you think of them you feel that intoxicating way again, and you soon realize that you can choose to feel that intoxicating way whenever you want to. (You don’t need them, but you can still thank them for being the ignitor).

In it’s simplest form, love is a release of lovely gooey sparkly rose-smelling chemicals in our bodies, but we become less generous with applying “love” to experiences when we begin to wrap our stories around them, choking them with our intellectualizations. Leave the story arc, the attachment styles, the childhood trauma pattern finding, behind. It’s always your mind (and your bruised ego) that say ‘it wasn’t really love, here’s why.’

Our bodies will always say otherwise, however.

4. But anyways, it had been 2.5 years of truly nothing. No kisses, no crushes. Certainly no sex if that wasn’t already clear. Two dates in total. It was a period of my life steeped in not enoughness. A time when I thought I just needed to heal this one more part of myself (which was always a moving target) to be ready for, or rather deserving of, the love I so desired. Not realizing that in doing so, I was rejecting certain parts of me, deeming them unlovable.

5. When we have such long spans of nothing of the thing that we so deeply desire, we have to pause and be honest with ourselves – am I terrified of receiving such a thing? (I was.)

And yet somehow, as I lay on my bed in the sweet room of my English countryside b&b kicking my feet like a little girl, about to accept his Hinge like, I had gotten to the surprising culmination of: Fuck it, I’m ready to open my heart to love again. Why not.

(In all honesty, that “why not” was full and plump with all the tiny promises I had kept to myself over those 2.5 years. That hearty '“why not” fortified from all the boundaries I had set quite awkwardly and then eventually with ease. The carefree “why not” that was built upon a hill of intention and self trust. The spontaneous “why not” that I felt safe taking was because I actually felt safe within myself. The easy going “why not” that finally made it okay to swoon and immediately melt the moment I heard him say “volcahnic structscha” (volcanic structure) in his English accent-laden voice memo.)

6. I got to the cafe first and got us the perfect table by the stone wall with wood sorrels poking out of it. I picked a few and pressed them in my journal, somehow knowing I would need a memento for whatever might occur. Somehow already knowing then what I know now.

7. What do I know now?

8. I know that he was so sweet and I still stand by that. A truly good soul.

I know that he made me throw my head back in laughter with quick, dry wit that always caught me off guard in the most refreshing of ways. Especially when he said “I’m vanilla in bed but adaptable,” feeling like both a lover and a best friend.

I know that he inspired me to get green bed sheets after having white for 10 years, and to sprinkle flax seeds, hemp, pepitas and nutritional yeast on my eggs because our hunter archetype bodies love that.

I know that the slow burn is the way.

And I know that sometimes you also just have to run into the fire. Especially when you only have 5 days together.

I know that my newly healed skin is still tender from running into said fire––the flesh still pink and quite soft to touch.

I know that you can’t morph people into what you want them to be, and more importantly, attempting to do so is not love.

I know that there was that moment where your stomach drops into a pit when something suddenly shifts and its presence can’t be ignored but we both ignored it anyways and then I got back to LA and he stayed in Devon and it was as if our rubber band snapped under the pressure because we (I) tried to stretch it further than it was meant to go.

9. But wait, please. Please let me revel in the magic once more, back to the time before I knew…

10. How at the cafe he offered to take me around the moor and how I said I’ll drive myself thank you and then 15 minutes into the date I giggled as I said I would like you to take me now that I feel safe with you.

How we sat on a tor on a misty day sharing a thermos of tea and decided that our next activity would be mushroom foraging and when I asked how he would prepare them––Sautéed? With butter? And he chuckled as he said, “they’re magic ones” with a grin. How his dark brown twinkly eyes somehow found the small, delicate brown caps that looked like tiny wizard hats and how his hands parted the moss aside so gently before he plucked it and we cheers-ed and swallowed what tasted like sweet earth.

How he took me to this particular area because he knew I wanted to see Highland cows which were indeed there with a fuzzy calf greeting us from afar.

How it was dumping rain but we still wanted to be outside so we jumped from rock to rock, nearly slipping, feeling like children, talking about random stuff, not even thinking really, just being there, together.

11. “(This is where the conversation shifts into the type you want.) He is no longer saying versions of things he has said before, he’s not protecting himself, he’s just there.” – Henrik Karlsson, from Escaping Flatland

12. He was longingly looking at the river until he suddenly said, “would you be comfortable with me getting in?” I responded with yes, of course, yet I hadn’t realized he brought a bathing suit. To which he said, “I didn’t” with a cheeky smile, and to which I then said, “I’m gonna stare if that’s okay.” He didn’t argue with me for a second.

And so with my eyes glued to him and my face bright red, he scurried down the slippery moss-covered rocks down to the river’s edge, by a perfect circle of rocks that had slowed the current. As he dunked himself in with a little holler of glee, there was a glitch in the matrix – one of the most powerful deja vu’s I have ever experienced – one where I was certain we had been here in another life, together. I had known him before and this was our reunion this time around.

My interior rolled around in the familiarity like a dog on fresh grass. It felt so good. It still does. To feel in your body, ah hello again, no matter the length of time you are together. I would do it all again for that familiarity, that recognition that is from another world, another time, another reality.

13. I blushed as he scrambled back up and put his clothes over his still wet body that I had seen in totality before I knew how his lips felt against mine. And then something came over me as I, the planner of planners, brashly and giddily declared, “I’m going in.”

He closed his eyes as I undressed (which honestly disappointed me – so exhaustingly respectful and didn’t even sneak a peek.) The mud squelched around my toes as I tied my raincoat around my naked bare waist, clutching onto one last bit of control before tossing it on the rock behind me and dunking myself in the river Herself.

Nothing and everything all at once.

I laughed one of those laughs where it’s not even you laughing, it’s God, it’s life. Where you have never felt so alive and there is no such thing as the past or the present, there is only the now. And you realize: here we are. Heaven on earth.

14. The giddy shrieks. The non-stop conversations that could go on for days. The shared interests that kept popping up left and right. The kisses and hand holding in public. The jigsaw piece spooning.

Our ‘slow burn’ was no where to be found. Our fire was blazing, burning quickly, and we knew it.

We consciously talked about how we both needed to take things slowly. But I was only here for 5 days! So we agreed – we’d simply have to make an exception this time around.

15. (I should’ve known.)

16. You can feel It but you say nothing.

The pit in your stomach whose spikes you felt for the first time on day 3. Day 3 which really felt like the 3-year mark of our ‘relationship’ because time is an illusion anyways.

I’m sitting in his room as he’s doing work and he lit some copal incense next to me and it’s directly hitting me in the face, but I’m too caught up in feeling the anxiety that is oozing off him, so much so that I can almost see it. In fact I can see it because I just came from a course at a spiritual college up north where we were developing our psychic abilities and there were deep purple oily whisps swirling around his head.

17. (We always know).

18. And so I do what I was indirectly taught: I cheerlead and I encourage and I love in a way that I didn’t realize I had learned long ago when I was small and saw my momma do it. It’s when you try to become the undimmable beam of light in the hopes that it will keep theirs from flickering because their flickering is causing them so much distress and it pains you to see that. But you forgot that all lights flicker and it’s an adult’s job to tend to their own light bulb, not yours. You also don’t realize yet that you yourself are performing––hiding away the dimmed parts, putting them in a cabinet. You don’t mean to but you are.

19. Something has changed and I can sense that you’ve become a skittish horse so I’m noticing and observing your movements and moving quietly so as not to disturb you. But ‘nothing’s wrong,’ and it was sealed with a kiss, so I guess I have to trust that. A securely attached person would trust that. But every intuitive signal in my body says something isn’t right. I feel like I’m going crazy and I’m emotional because I miss you and I miss England, this place I know I’m meant to live, and so it’s all just compounding on top of each other. The lack of clarity around where we stand isn’t helping. I don’t want to play it by ear and just go on talking casually, flirting, saying we miss each other, giving little fucking life updates. I want to talk it through, together, and figure out something that works for the both of us even if that means it’s just a friendship. So I ask if we can talk about how our dynamic is going to change now that we’re thousands of miles apart and he says okay and then days go by and he sends me a photo of persimmons and a week goes by and he never brings up the talk. Why is this simple ask so hard? Did I ask clearly enough? Was I too emotional? Or was my ask actually clear, just inconvenient? Why do I have to nearly demand to have such a simple conversation and ugh, can we just talk please?

20. I should’ve known.

It unravels rather effortlessly, as if the dynamic was finally settling into its true nature. A fucked up exhale of sorts. And for a moment I think, why did I have to push?

That moment lasts a while. But not as long as it might have in the past.

Irritation and anger and annoyance and condescension quickly take over as my ego tries to say, he can’t even have a simple fucking conversation, fuck this, fuck him, I’m more healed, he can’t meet me where I need him to. But eventually the anger tires itself out. It can’t hold itself up anymore and the sadness, which was always waiting patiently, begins to peak through.

21. Am I too much? Again?

I swirl and I swirl in that. I still sometimes swirl in that.

And then my (god sent) coach so simply asked me, “what if someone asked YOU to have a conversation like the one you wanted? How would you receive that ask?”

With open arms and tears in my eyes, of course.

For to be asked something so intentional and straight forward is an absolute act of love. Initiating hard conversations is a love language. It says I care so deeply about whatever this is that I want to make sure we tend to it and treat it with care as we move forward. Let’s talk about how we’d like to do that, a way that works for both of us. Even if that means we realize that being friends is the better route, I would be okay with that. Because this was so special and I know deep down that you felt that too, even if you got cold feet towards the end.

22. We never got there though. Between his recoil and my grasp––we weren’t able to get past the wretched karmic dance that we all know so well. I can’t count how many special connections are lost to this tango from hell.

Despite it all, the relentless optimist in me always holds faith for mending in the future – a wish I hold lightly, letting it float beside me, but never fully latch on. Maybe these particular versions of us didn’t work out, but in time, the new versions could be friends. Who knows?

23. There may not always be a happy ending, but there is always clarity around what you truly desire if you look close enough:

Give me radical openness. Give me raw, emotional intimacy – intimacy that exists not only in the moments where it’s happy tears but in the harder, heavier ones too. Give me someone who loves that I cry at rainbows and who knows how to comfort me when I feel hurt or anxious about us. Give me real heartfelt apologies that are supported by changed behavior. Give me someone who initiates hard conversations and sees them as a brave act of love in service of this beautiful union we have created. Give me someone who is excited not just for connection, but for commitment and the depth of that new human experience, together.

24. ‘I should’ve known.’ We always want to know so we can avoid the hurt. We always want to foresee the truth of someone so we can dodge the potential pain, rather than just letting it unfold. Rather than just letting our soul experience something new and novel. Rather than just letting ourselves live fully and love openly, without fear, without jadedness. Rather than so bravely putting our heart on the line because we ourselves have created the safety we needed to risk it.

25. Petrified of the potential of unrequited love, I know that high school Kristen can see me now. High school Kristen who never told any of her crushes that she liked them. I know she saw me when I said, ‘God, this feels so special, I want to see you again...’

And I know she can see me now. In my mushy gushiness that lays me bare and tender, but strong.

For to feel heartbreak means you had the courage to love.

Love you,

– Kristen <3