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Let the author read it to you.

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I think I’ve got it this time. 

I finally know the answer: I’m in love with falling in love. 

But I don’t like BEING in love. 

Does that make sense?

Eh, of course it doesn’t. 

Let me explain.

Falling in love is like snorting pure Columbian cocaine off a glass table back in the days when disco ruled the airwaves. It’s that feeling in your lower stomach as you drive fast over a hill. It’s that euphoria of people canceling plans with you in your 30s. It’s the nights when you get too drunk and feel invincible and end up doing a whole bunch of things that make a great story, but that future you will not appreciate. 

Being in love is the Monday morning after all of that when you go back to who you really are five days out of the week.

It’s the routine that allows the other parts of your life to exist. It’s the amorphous center of the whole cluster of concepts of family, relationships, purpose and so on. 

It has a kind of weight to it.

It’s work. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s rewarding if you actually do the work and build that life you want from the ground up with that person.

And I promise you I have tried to do that earnestly at least three times in my life. 

But we go back to my original problem: The second that feeling crosses from “falling” to “being” — and I mean, the exact moment it even becomes the hint of a realization in my mind ⏤ that part of me that’s afraid of getting hurt again starts pulling every other part of me towards the door. 

Not because I’m not in love. 

I leave people I’m in love with at an alarming rate, to be honest. Why? Maybe I’m secretly a masochist. I don’t know. 

I can only speculate as to which of my plethora of problems is the root cause of it. 

Could be that at least a handful of the people I’ve dated have cheated on me, and somehow I’ve always taken that as a reflection of me instead of a reflection of their character. 

Could be the lingering feeling that I don’t really deserve love. 

Again, who knows? I certainly don’t. 

But my main point is, if you just keep leaping, love is easy. 

It’s okay to be somewhat guarded while you’re falling. Everything’s new. The lack of details is taken as mysterious instead of inconsiderate. My idiosyncrasies are still interesting instead of being off putting. 

But by the point of “being”, I’d have to let my guard completely down. 

Suddenly, I have to let you be able to take everything I’ve ever told you about myself and fashion it into a shiv that you’re waiting to one day slide in between my ribs if that’s what you choose to do. 

Or even worse: What if you accept me? 

What if you actually want me to stay around? 

Do I even know how to stand still anymore? 

See, even considering “being” is complicated and nerve-wracking.

So I just fall. 

And I keep falling without trying to truly latch onto anything anymore.

It just hurts my fingers when I do now.

But maybe you’re like me. 

You may get terrified by the big picture that is romance and love and family and the future as well. 

Perhaps you’re out there leaping and plummeting too, and I’ll see you sometime.

Maybe then you and I can fall together. 

Holding hands as we fade obstinately into oblivion.

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