I Was Wrong.

On love: what I've learned, the everyday proof of it, and unlearning what I've created to cope.

In prayer and in multiple journal entries, I would joke with God about wanting a “pookie”. By that I mean a stable consistent partner (specifically romantic) whose existence can be beautifully intermingled with mine. Someone who is adventurous, intelligent, and creative. Someone who indulges in exploring, learning, and laughing. Someone shaped by nature, as I am.

There was no time limit on the arrival of this person, I was just putting the desire out into the atmosphere.

For some reason, suddenly those jokes aren’t so funny anymore.

I have realized that I am still scared of growing roots in someone else’s life and —better yet — someone growing roots in my life. I’m not scared of the roots themselves, rather the possibility that they could uproot me or themself.

I am scared that I won’t be memorable or significant enough in someone’s life for them to stick around for long. Yet I am not needy for constant reassurance and communication.

I will explain.

As much as I want to be a compelling person (friend, partner, etc) in people’s life, I never want to lose my individuality and simply become or belong to that person. My favorite fictional character I use to explain this thought is Clarissa Dalloway who describes her life and circumstance as “this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway”¹.

I want to be my own person while simultaneously being known as my partner’s pookie. I want my partner to be their own person while still known as my pookie.

I believe there is something so profound about meeting someone and falling in love with them from the way they view the world as well as the way they operate in the world. Falling in love with someone’s brain, someone’s heart. As a lover of romance and books, I know many quotes explaining this experience: “We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn't matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see”². Better yet, “In a solitary life, there are rare moments when a soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the Earth. Such a constellation was he to me”³.

In another essay, I wrote: “Love doesn’t pay the bills, love isn’t a guaranteed partnership, love sometimes doesn’t last forever, love doesn’t automatically mean security. Love is quite simply, not enough.”

I was wrong.

Love pays the bills. Love lingers forever. Love is secure. Love is more than enough.

I once slipped up and told my mom, jokingly, “Love don’t pay the bills.” And my mom — even after experiencing the financially tumultuous relationships that she’s been through — laughed and said: Yes it does. Love should give you the encouragement, and excitement, and passion to get up and do what you love. You see it with the different books that you read with authors who have their pookies at home supporting them as they write. You see it with the different scientists you look up to whose pookies let them bring home random animals. Love pays the bills because it gives people the energy to pay the bills. If love ain’t getting you up in the morning and driving you, it is not love.

I’ve been unlearning the beliefs I created based on the love I observed. I am allowing myself to demand more from and for my life. Life won’t happen to me, I’ve decided, Life will come from me. Having faith that I will experience both the life and love how I wish to, I must prepare accordingly. I have developed standards for myself on how I will operate platonically and romantically.

When I talk about fear’s correlation to romance, I attempt to describe this juxtaposition of not being scared to “die alone” but also hoping that I will be lucky enough to experience a gentle, long-lasting love. Part of me believed that the proximity I’ve had to a love unsteady destines me for the same—which I will no longer allow myself to believe. I am quite determined to be the mistress of my own fate, as the wonderful Veronica Speedwell⁴ would say.

I’ve decided that because I give what I deserve, the love I give returns back to me with the same fierceness.

I don’t yearn desperately for a partner. I know that I am more than okay without one. I know now that the proof of love is within nearly everything on this Earth. I see the romance within the everyday life: branches of trees clinging to each other, otters laying on each others bellies, floating sleepily about, hugs from family members, owls cuddled up in a small hollow of a tree.

I’ve learned to chase love in all the ways that it abundantly shows up in my life: breathing, slow-dancing, fighting, laughing, reading, small explorations, and writing. I know now that the love I’m searching for is within myself and the mundaneness of everyday life, and is strong and consistent. Yulani loves me and that matters to me more than anything.

Along with the things I’ve learned, I’m learning to allow myself to fall without anticipating a bone crush. I’m learning to not anticipate someone being what I don’t want them to be. I’m learning over and over again that my love returns to me. I’m learning that my hope for love has started to bring it to me. Now I must hold on even tighter to hope so that I can accept what I’ve asked for.

“Nothing is more embarrassing than being a hopeless romantic afraid of love,” I once said.

I was wrong.

There is nothing hopeless about how romantic I am. For love cannot exists or become when there is an absence of hope.

Signed, your local hopeful romantic,

Yulani Sann.

1. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. Penguin Books, 2020.

2. Green, John. Turtles All the Way Down. Penguin Books, 2018.

3. Miller, Madeline. Circe. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2018.

4. A reference to a fictional character created by Deanna Raybourn in her series: Veronica Speedwell. Book 1: Raybourn, Deanna. A Curious Beginning. Penguin Publishing Group, 2015.