Love. Actually.

Sickular libtard

The good news is that I have no headspace left for the BJP. The bad news is that I have no headspace left at all. I’ve gone and done it, reader—gone and fallen catastrophically in love.

There are two kinds of believers: those who embrace god and have faith that they’ll live after death; and those who embrace love, and have faith that they’ll survive potentially getting killed by it. That’s me. Self-preservation is a healthy response to toxicity, but when it comes only from fear and specialises only in sticking its foot out to trip up every possibility of joy, it must be tossed lightly out of the window.

It’s not that cooler-headed, safer romances aren’t wonderful—they are. A little light dating, polyamory, friends with benefits, affectionate flirtation are all good. Sometimes you just want peace. But one doesn’t choose a bolt from the blue that lights you up like Christmas, with a 50% chance of being charred to cinders later. For a few days I stomped around irritably, muttering “Oh no, no way, I hate this” under my breath, but by then I was already in big trouble.

Everyone should allow themselves to fall catastrophically in love occasionally, because living behind a safety wall is pretty bloodless. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with your feelings, surrender and leap off the cliff—if nothing else, it’s very instructive. Whether you fly or fall, you’ll have plenty of company, because love is only one of conjoined triplets. The other two, risk and insecurity, travel alongside, shaking pointy horns and gnashing terrible teeth and trying to murder their delicate sibling. Blow them a raspberry, but you’ll have to get to know them to keep their savagery in check. Let the whole circus have its way with you, shredding all your little categories and certainties into confetti. They were rickety to start with. There’s an even chance that one or both of you will go ker-splat, but it’ll have been worth the ride.

But it’s only worth it if you allow yourself to be skin-stripped-off vulnerable, naked-shivering-ugly vulnerable. That’s where the riches are to be had. Points if you can maintain your dignity, but dignity (unlike consent) is optional; you’re only truly ridiculous if you take yourself too seriously. You’ll strain against your own borders until you’re forced to expand and grow. You’ll have to try to resist self-sabotage, not let insecurity poison the well, trust that the party that claims to love you back actually does, stay true to yourself. You’ll have to junk preconceptions, break emotional habits, and allow a unique dynamic to be whatever it is.

They should give gallantry awards for this kind of effort. And at the end of all that, it could be dead by the time this goes to press.

One can only try.

Those of us who have leapt off the cliff a time or two and wound up shattered on the rocks, can offer two invaluable field notes from life: 1. You’ll think you won’t survive, and 2. You’ll totes survive, and probably do this again.

The map of a pink-cheeked new love is no larger than the present moment. If the past is already dust, the future is sand at best, so if at all you can imagine one, its only certainty is that there is no certainty. Beyond the map there may be monsters, no doubt; but then there may be other monsters right in your head. Those are the ones to ride harder than they ride you.

It should all work once you properly grasp the theory. In Douglas Adams’ words, it is this: The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground, and miss.

(Mitali Saran thinks a good asteroid could solve all our problems @mitalisaran)