On Attention & Love
I get mad at myself. I’m mad that I’m still thinking about him. It’s been over a year since we last spoke and he has already moved on to a new relationship. And here I am, still replaying the past, trying to glean another lesson. I know where my gears are getting caught. I’m stuck on my belief that it felt so close to being right, that love was just beyond my finger tips. I still can’t shake the almostness of it. It’s a terrible place to be because believing in almost will drive you crazy.
I don’t understand why the disappointments alone won’t allow me to let go of the illusion that it was anywhere close to right. With distance, it’s become obvious that we were worlds apart in so many critical ways. I have many memories of discussing topics that left us circling around for hours, falsely believing that our next point would draw us closer to agreement. I began to describe these conversations as feeling like I had been put through a pasta maker, each round leaving me more and more compressed until I finally just split apart. While I would flail around, fearing the distance our disagreements seemed to create, he would calmly insist that our viewpoints were not so disparate, that we were almost saying the same thing.
We had different perspectives, different definitions of a successful life, and, the dagger, different goals. Every once in a while he would bemoan the fact that I seemed weighted down, made inert by my inability to let go of the past. He would tell me he wanted to take my hand and run, build a future with me. My propensity for rumination made me believe him. I saw myself as a burden, a barrier to the progress I wanted. As it turns out, no matter how close two points are on a plane, if the lines they are a part of are even a few degrees off from parallel, they will inevitably drift apart. It wasn’t that I was stuck, it was that I was always meant to take a different path. We kept thinking we could simply reach out and pull the other into alignment, and I kept believing that our stubbornness was the only reason this failed, but we were always on a different trajectory.
Why then, knowing this, am I still contemplating the feeling of almost? I think it’s that, despite our differences, we always gave each other focused attention, and because the Venn diagram of attention and love overlap, the consistency of that attentiveness felt almost like love. When our attention is pulled in a million directions, it’s amazing how special it can feel to have someone agree to actively listen to the mundanities of your daily life, to curiously ask about your worries and your joys.
The philosopher Simone Veil said that, “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” and we were generous with each other. Like any couple, we built moments of intimacy by sharing the books, movies, podcasts, and articles that felt important to us. We never said, “I love you,” but we asked each other daily, “what do you think about this?” We never said, “I love you,” but we asked each other daily, “what’s on your mind?” We never said, “I love you,” but we gave each other the concentrated attention that love requires.
He gave me the space to share all my fears, all my heartbreaks, and all my dreams. He wanted my opinion about everything from politics to religion, from parenthood to death, from movies to meals. After a long string of lonely years interspersed by short-lived, superficial relationships, it felt like years of pent up thoughts finally burst through a dam. It felt like stretching after a long, cramped train ride. Despite the “pasta maker” nights, when I think back to our time together, the sensation of releasing years of pent up ideas and easing back into myself is still the most prominent feeling. And yet, as I lusted after the joy of feeling seen, I slowly began to drift further and further away from myself.
His absence immediately felt like being shoved back onto the cramped train. The thoughts and opinions were still there, but there was no one to listen. I suppose writing was inevitable, an outlet for the energy that swirls around then stagnates inside of me. Admitting this feels childish and needy. I feel like the kid begging the adults in the room to watch her new trick. But I think children and adults are more alike than we are comfortable admitting. I think we all have a universal longing to be seen.
Of course I want to use writing as a form of expression, a way to learn about myself, a way to connect to others. But it’s also true that I hope writing will draw me back out of that cramped train car and allow me to expand into the full self I thought I could only be in his presence. And maybe, once I do that, I will stop confusing attention for love.
