Pushing and Pulling

...I learned to make love the way I learned how to swim. Frightened but determined, dropped into waters where the choice to survive could only be your own.

Asha Bandele, The Prisoners Wife

I love this book. There are many, many passages I could quote where Asha's testimonies of love and life mirrors my own. Regarding love and loving, the aforementioned quote sums up my orientation towards love. Hopeful. No, that'’s an understatement. Passionate. An alpha lover. Determined. A knock down, drag out lover. I am not the wife of a prisoner, but many times I feel like a prisoner of love. Love'’s adversary. Sometimes I'’m just not interested in having love as a guest, yet, it insists on staying around. I'’m just not that into you. This is the case when Love is not being recipricated properly. When I'm loving you, like I'm loving myself and you're just chillin. Like I'm trying to meld with you, trying to be as natually a part of you like the pulse in your wrists. Or, when I don't understand your expression, and I take them for granted and become mad at myself. Or, when you love me but do something wack. Thus, love and I often have beef. We fight, we spar. We make up only to be like, the fugg u want? Love is certainly welcome, especially romantic love, but when the time is correct. When it comes rushing onto my heart, unannounced and unsolicited, I'’m like whoa: you don'’t have to go home but you gotta get the hell out of here. Then we fight. Punch in the jaw, kick in the knees, elbow in the stomach. I win. I carry love on my forearms to a dug-out grave. I toss love in the hole and walk away. Soon, I am running away with my hands waving frantically in the air and screaming because looking back, I see love reaching out of its ditch like the zombies from Michael Jackson'’s Thriller. I thought it was dead. It never dies once it enters your heart. It may go into recession, but all it takes is tripping over a memory or an old email falling out of place to soften your heart. Love = MSG. I love it, though.