A few weeks ago, I started to wonder if I cannot love. It was somewhat of a plot twist for someone who spent a lot of their life thinking about unrequited crushes, writing love songs, and reading romance novels. But after a lifetime of confused feelings and missing pieces, I wondered if love is something only meant for other people.
The purest form of romantic love I have experienced was for my classmate in the fifth grade. He was one of my best friends, and I say that I loved him because before I even understood the concept of romance, I got to know him for who he was and fell for him because of it. Although at the time I was sure that I was in love, the fact that I was eleven years old makes me wonder today if I was even capable of that feeling.
Throughout middle school and high school, I had crushes on around fifteen different boys, none of whom I knew very well. I found them attractive in one superficial way or another, and I felt a sort of romantic excitement whenever I was around them. Though I shamelessly called them my crushes to my friends, today I feel that they were not crushes at all, that there is a difference between attraction and romantic feelings.
The most important love story in my life is perhaps the most complicated. I had been friends with this person for a couple of years when I realized that I might like them. All they did was put their head on my shoulder to take a nap, but it felt like one of the most beautiful moments of my life. Some people remember the pandemic and think of having endless free time, binging Netflix shows for hours on end or perfecting a recipe for sourdough bread. My pandemic was filled with endless thoughts of my friend and wondering if I was in love with them. It should have been easy to call it love. At our senior prom, my friend and I slow-danced to “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran. I have always hated that song, but I smiled at them and enjoyed the music because for that one precious moment, the song belonged to us, and we were happy. Today, I tell everyone I meet about the friend from high school who I fell in love with, but in high school, I spent every day asking myself if my feelings for them were platonic or romantic.
Recently, I met someone who I never want to stop being around. Because I have always found social interaction difficult, there’s only a handful of people that I genuinely enjoy talking to. I knew from the first conversation I had with this person that she would be one of those people. These days, I’m always thinking about her, and I wonder if I am falling in love again. But I worry that I’m trying to force what could be a beautiful friendship into an unstable romantic relationship, that I’m confusing the mere enjoyment of someone’s company with love.
I suppose my concern is not about the possibility that I am unable to love but rather that my constant doubt will forever prevent me from knowing when I feel love. What is love? Is love supposed to feel a certain way, or is it different for everyone? If I am constantly questioning my feelings, never to understand what feeling is what, how am I any different from someone who cannot love at all? There is nothing wrong with not feeling romantic love, but I have always wanted a love story, and I worry that the voices in my head will stop me from ever having one. They say that when you find the right person, you will know, but I’m terrified that the doubt will never end, and I’ll end up letting every possible love story go.
*James Baldwin said that Giovanni’s Room is about a dangerous person, or someone who cannot love. When David is with Hella, he calls her “a familiar, darkened room in which [he] fumbled to find the light” (Baldwin 121). With every romantic prospect I think I am fumbling for a light switch, wondering if this is what love should feel like. Am I like David, a dangerous person? I attempt to explore that concern in this essay through several true stories. Each story parallels one of David’s experiences of love: Joey, the men he meets in Paris, Giovanni, and Hella.
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