I have been having a really weird experience this summer, which is that I fell in love for the first time. I'm 36, and if you'd asked me if I had ever been in love previously, I would have said "I don't know, maybe? I used to think so but now I'm not sure? What's it mean to be in love?? how would I know if I had or not???" I thought that because I had not experienced it myself, the people who were always saying "oh no, trust me, You Would Know" were all lying or otherwise mistaken. I DID NOT BELIEVE THEM. I was fully like "this is some sort of mass delusion, there's no way that's a thing"
Now that I know that this is something that Exists even if it doesn't always Look Like They Tell You, there's SO many things that make sense to me!!! Whenever I encountered Romance Stuff before, I had no desire to do any of it AND could not comprehend why anyone else would ever want to either. It was this really large experiential disconnect for me. Whether or not I want to do any of those things, I now understand why other people would, if they Were In Love. LIKE I GET IT NOW. IT MAKES SENSE TO ME. I still can't relate to things like people in movies falling in love instantly, but now it's like "oh right, that's a potential state of being that exists," rather than "pretty fucked up that hollywood made Being In Love up to sell more flowers or whatever."
I feel like I'm constantly 24/7 running a software update on my brain that's been overdue to be installed for years or perhaps decades. It's just like "OK YUP UPDATING ALL THESE PROGRAMS AND FOLDERS. THIS WILL TAKE SOME TIME AND DATA BYTES OR WHATEVER, BUCKLE UP!" Pretty sure there's actually one of those little rainbow spinning icons above my head the whole time I'm conscious, like I am some sort of very confused Sim.
This happened to me REALLY SLOWLY, too, so it was like a big blockage in a river, and more and more stuff was just piling up against it, and then the dam broke, and now I'm sitting in the shallows of a giant basin lake under a massive waterfall wringing my hat out and going "woah. they got never before seen types of fish in here"
Who else knew about this??? Unfortunately the answer is: a majority of human beings over a certain age DID in fact know about this, it's just that every time anyone said "this is a way people feel about each other sometimes," I said "hmm. sounds fake." In-cred-i-ble.
Turns out that being in love is just an experience that people can have!! It's just a thing that happens sometimes! Some people have had it happen to them a bunch and some people not at all. It's just A Thing That Can Happen To You. Wtf. WHAT WILL I DISCOVER NEXT????? IT COULD BE ANYTHING !!! WHAT WOULD BE THE FUNNIEST POSSIBLE NEXT THING FOR ME TO REALIZE EXISTS? ONLY TIME WILL TELL. (Can you fucking imagine having this happen to you when you are in your seventies or eighties rather than your mid thirties ????? THAT WOULD BE THE WORLD'S MOST DISORIENTING EXPERIENCE.) (I also thought that "having chemistry" was fake.) (Do not diagnose me, I PROMISE I already know)
503 notes
·
View notes