can i talk about this?

I’ve tinkered with this article more than any article I’ve put up in a long time. In my dream world, this was going to go up right around Valentine’s Day but February 14th came and went and all the pink and red packaged candy has long since gone on sale and I’m still staring at this draft.  

Over the past four years I’ve tried to make this blog a vulnerable and brave space but there have always been ideas and experiences that I just figured would never be written about. This is one of them. While some of my favorite artists, writers, and creators are the ones that talk honestly about love, I’ve carefully steered clear for a number of reasons.

I think maybe two years ago on Valentine’s Day I wrote something about love but I really have never explored love or romance or relationships or hookup culture or whatever version of all of this exists on a college campus with any sort of full honesty or vulnerability. I’ve kept all this at an arms distance for a few reasons (including but not limited to the fact that Colgate is extremely tiny and everyone seems to know everyone’s business all the time so how was I ever to write of my experiences with any air of anonymity or privacy).

As a 22-year-old on a college campus there seem to be a lot of unspoken rules about what I am supposed to want and what I’m “allowed” to say out loud. It is my general perception that to talk about love and romance and relationship(s) as a college student is to come off as desperate. It is too much. You come off too strong – like you’ll scare any potential suiters away. To say out loud that the casual hookup scene isn’t really your vibe or that perhaps just maybe you want something more isn’t a “chill girl” move (whatever the heck that even means). This is what I really want to talk about today. And it is what really scares me. And maybe this makes me “emotionally slutty” with you all but it’s what I want to do today. To start to push back against the idea that we can’t or shouldn’t admit that we want romantic love in our lives.

It is okay to want love. And it is okay to say that out loud.

I often hear two arguments against wishing or longing for love and especially against saying those things out loud.

(1) That we do not need anyone to complete us. I know this. I know that we are all already enough. That we are all already complete. We should learn to be on our own and be okay with being single. But I’ll continue and say that I don’t think it is a bad thing to yearn for romantic love. It is not such a bad thing, not a weakness, not an inability to be alone, not an insecurity in being with yourself to want romantic love in your life. At least not always. I am not meaning to argue that we should be looking for fulfillment outside of ourselves but I guess am just wondering why we can’t simultaneously embrace independence, exude self-confidence, and wish to share it with another person.

(2) You find love the moment you stop looking for it. Basically, stfu and when someone is supposed to come along they will. Again, I understand this. And I guess part of me really doesn’t mean to argue against this because I do think that trying to force anything into your life will just never work. But I also think it’s a bit unfair that you aren’t allowed to talk about wanting love unless you have it.

I think for a lot of us, this season especially maybe reminds us of what’s missing. Of what we don’t have. Of what we’ve maybe never had. It’s okay to admit those things. It’s okay to want romantic love in your life and it’s okay to admit it hurts when it’s not there. It doesn’t make you too much.

It is my hope that this article and these thoughts I am still working through (clearly) have not come off to mean that we should not celebrate single-ness. I don’t mean to wallow in any semblance of self-pity. But I also do not mean to get caught up in any anti-Valentine’s Day rhetoric. I want to find some happy, probably more honest medium.

And maybe using the word “love” seems like too far a leap. Maybe “love” seems like too much to start with. But I guess my point or my hope or my wish is that it be okay to be more honest about how we feel about love and relationships – whether we have it or not.

In a world that seeks connection, we oddly avoid eye contact, we time our text responses in order to protect ourselves from seeming too eager or too interested, and we hold our feelings back because we don’t want to seem overly emotional or unreasonable - Bianca Sparacino (@rainbowsalt)

When it comes to love and romance there seem to be a lot of rules - and I’m still not sure I know most of them. Rules about what we can say, what we can do, when we can say and do those things, and what seems to be totally off limits to muse about outside of the limits of best friend-ship. I wonder what it would look like if we all kept our hearts a little softer. If it wasn’t seen as overly emotional or unreasonable to say you care. To say that you might want something more.

ps. I want to end by emphasizing that just because I, and maybe you too, do not have romantic love in our lives right now in this moment, that we are still so loved. Perhaps more loved than we will ever know or could imagine. And maybe more than anything this is my note to self:

relax, i love you.