I have a coldness about me. Unlovable sort of…I am difficult to love, – says Sally Rooney in her book Normal People.
Okay, so, when I read this, it made me think. First, because it kind of hits home. Second, because I know it touched deeply a lot of people as well.
Why do we all feel like we’re not enough? What’s causing our insecurities?
Who’s to say your hair looks “very eighties,” or “don’t skip college,” or “how come you are still single?” or “on and off relationships are not real relationships.”
After banging-my-head-against-the-wall kind of thinking about this issue, it dawned on me that maybe it’s all those labels we put that weigh on us.
You hear people saying how they are not suitable to be in a relationship, how they suck at it, how they sabotage relationships because they are afraid of actually having one, how this, how that…
Maybe our bonds with people would work out better if we, at least for a second, shunned neatly packaged titles and labels and if we left some space for those ambiguous, in-between, non-exclusive bonds we create with people.
Every once in a while, we get to hear the phrase friends with benefits, or we’re not a thing, or it’s complicated.
Oh, how I love those phrases. They give you time to think, time to figure things out. They give you freedom and time to decide whether something is good for you or not.
We should accept different forms, different shapes, different structures, and we should accept them together with all those bumpy roads and curved lines along our way.
We shouldn’t settle down too early. We should travel, find the perfect job, get drunk with friends, and let life surprise us every now and then.
I mean, it’s the twenties. The roaring twenties, and come on, we should dance our way through them!
We should break out of those labels imposed on us and we should not conform to others’ needs and expectations of us.
Now, I am not going to vault the reality. Living in the modern age, I think we did already start moving towards the untamed, towards those blurry lines instead of concise definitions of our love life. But, there are still some that are having a hard time embracing complexity, so here’s to all of you:
Be bold, vigorous and enthusiastic, be spontaneous.
Acceptance of complexity seems to be the first step of inclusiveness, mutual love, and support. Be part of that acceptance. Make your own definitions.
