They tell me to write, as if trying to extract this tangled washing line of emotion will somehow explain what cannot be explained, untangle what cannot be untangled.
They advise confiding in friends, but these emotions packed away in the bottom draw of my belly cannot be conjured up on demand like my daytime smiles. So as life nudges me forward towards the banality of middle age finding my voice has become trickier.
But if I were to write I would write about our love. I would use the metaphor of an ocean’s waves. How our love is no longer a tsunami of emotion, the kind that consumes you before spitting you out, leaving you washed up, winded and bruised on the shore. In my 20s I could handle such intensity but now in my 30s I need to find deep waters in which to anchor.
Now in our 30s the waters have calmed. Today if I were to write about love I would describe our love as groundswell, water that swells into the harbour seeping into every corner before lifting boats out of the sand, ready to sail. These waters bring ripples of comfort as they wipe away the wreckage from last night’s winds. Now anchored, we remain buoyant ready to embrace future storms.
Without powerful winds to blow us forward such calm waters make our journey painfully slow. Yet there is something beautiful about this inert fragility. We drift from certainty to doubt and back again; never sure we will reach our chosen destination. Indeed, this uncertainly has been the anchor of our relationship, a constant companion through our ephemeral journeys.
So while others set out in search of tsunamis, as we are conditioned to do, let us celebrate the realness of our own gentle love. Its rises and falls; the false starts, new beginnings and possible endings. For our love is a love that has endured countless storms and it is a love that could weather many more.
This is what I would write if I were to write about love.
