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This post was supposed to be about love, and it’s become a long, rather ugly account of the history of my failed relationships.
July 23, 2022
I’ve been thinking about love. Mostly because I say “I love you” to ALL my friends, and so I’ve said it to Don a few times, but it makes me really uncomfortable, because I project onto him that it makes him really uncomfortable. Actually, it did, at first. He said he didn’t want anyone to like him. I’m not exactly sure why, since even if you don’t want to be liked, people are going to like you. Especially if you’re interesting, a bit eccentric, and an underdog. (My favorite type of person.) So I think it’s a combination. He doesn’t think he’s worthy of love, and he’s afraid of what will be expected of him if someone loves him.
Since I’ve explained the different kinds of love, and what love means to me now and how I use that expression, maybe he’s not so uncomfortable. Maybe I’ll ask him. But maybe he’ll say he still doesn’t like it, then I’ll be obligated to not tell him I love him, and I do. In a specific way. Which I’ll attempt to describe here.
Love has meant different things to me during the different phases of my life.
When I was very young, I had a lot of crushes. I mean A LOT. But I was never tortured by them because they were never…