Hi. It’s Been a While
I haven’t written anything on my Medium in a really long time. Almost two years to be exact, but let’s not dwell on that. I just got home after an evening out celebrating a friend’s birthday, and I find myself here, on my computer, doing one of the things I enjoy the most. Man, I’ve missed this.
Writing is more for me than the people who read my work, because it helps me better understand my thoughts as I try to piece them together in a way that is hopefully coherent. I think the goal of writing in an ideal world should be to express ourselves in as honest and sincere a way as possible, then a beautiful thing happens sometimes when people connect with someone else’s words, and you see that we’re a lot more connected than we may have initially believed.
Anyway, enough existentialism. Here’s what I was thinking about after a few Heinekens.
I have a complicated relationship with social media. Twitter is fine. Instagram, not so much. One moment I’m on my explore page looking at basketball highlights, and the next thing I know I’m five profiles deep, looking at someone’s photo from 2018, ensuring I don’t expose myself by accidentally liking anything.
A few days ago, I saw a photo a friend from undergrad had posted some days earlier. Instagram is now a terrible app that has slowly deteriorated, becoming one big advertising platform, so it doesn’t let you see the posts of those you follow in real time. So I found myself on his page, and saw a photo of him and the lady he was dating when we were in our senior year. I remembered her because she was in my graphic design class.
Because I apparently take inspiration from Joe from You, I found myself creeping on her page and saw that she had recently gotten married to someone else. After initially feeling a gust of old age, I scrolled not too far down, into the not-so-distant past, and that’s where I saw something new under the sun: she also had photos of both of them from the time they were together.
This may sound weird, but I loved seeing that.
I loved seeing that, in a world where exes are vilified and past relationships are treated as events to be forgotten, they both still had those photos up because they had shared some good memories together. She saw her first ever live hockey game with him; they once went to the beach and walked along the shoreline, hand-in-hand, with sand in between their toes; they took a trip for his fraternity’s formal together, and a few other memories they made that I cannot fully recall in this moment because it’s almost 2:00 a.m.
I loved seeing that they weren’t ashamed that their relationship had an end date, especially in a world where people refuse to post their significant other until they are either “sure,” or get to the finish line of marriage. My question to that train of thought is this: Is anyone ever truly sure? And I read somewhere that half of the marriages that occur these days end in divorce. So by those numbers, a marriage is certainly not a finish line. It’s a line that keeps on moving.
What I believe is this. And this comes from someone with very limited relationship experience, so do with that what you will. I think we’re afraid of being hurt; we’re afraid of looking foolish for loving wholeheartedly, especially in a world where everything is up for scrutiny; a world where people clown those who are cheated on. And to be fair, I understand. I empathize. Because of the things we see happen around us, and sometimes to us, it is not uncommon to be guarded, to love whilst holding back, to remain alert with someone who can potentially damage you emotionally beyond repair. But are half-loves and scared-loves a sufficient alternative? To be neither here nor there, but in no man’s land? To hold onto what you know may not be fully true? I do not believe so.
To love wholeheartedly is a great risk, but it is one I believe is worth taking. My eyes are barely open at this point so this may be an abrupt end, but I leave you, my dear reader, with two things. The first is a quote I saw somewhere about love. I might be paraphrasing.
Love is more so a sacrifice. A responsibility not to be taken lightly. To hold someone’s heart and treasure it so dearly, as opposed to a thing in which one can draw from endlessly for their own gain. To truly love unadulteratedly, is to look at it as a give rather than a take.
The second is a few words from me:
I’m back.
