7/21/25

Love is capable of many things. The word itself conjures images of long walks on the beach, a shared lease, picnic dates, and forced small talk leading to night-long conversations. It can be inherent, like the love one feels for their mother or sibling - a love that goes without question, and requires nothing but its own presence to nurture its existence. It can be found and tended to, like the love of a friend - a love forged out of circumstances and chance passings, kept close to one's heart forever, or for a mere few days. It can be euphoric, creating bliss in the things that once felt mundane, like the love of a partner - a love made just for you, to be shared and cared for. Love can also be harsh and cruel. It can go a lifetime unspoken, tearing down walls and shifting reality from one thing to another. It can become insecure, insincere, a leash to drag one along until its eventual rapture leaves them with pavement-scraped knees and a dulled spark. One can feel a strong love for things that can not love us back, at least not in the same manner we love them. I love every cat I have lived with more than words can muster; however, they can never tangibly return such an intense love. They cannot say it back, nor hug and kiss us as we may hug and kiss them. I love fashion and writing, but I have also never felt worse about myself or my place in the world than when stared down by the unloving face of a passion not returned. The expression of love is at most the pinnacle of vulnerability, and at least the strongest profession of care. So what do we do when the things, animals, and people cannot reciprocate love in the way we need to feel it? Love can be many things; it can be beautiful, it can be innate, it can be wordless, but sometimes, more than the rest, love can be destructive. How do we differentiate the love that hurts from the love that heals? When is "love" enough?

 "Do what you love and the money will come", is a phrase that frequently comes to mind when working in any industry, but none so much as those immersed within the arts. For the last decade, give or take a few years, my most toxic relationship has been found within my work. Any person privileged yet unfortunate enough to find themselves working for passion rather than income can attest to how stressful such a phrase can be, largely because for the last decade or so, the latter portion of such a sentiment has yet to become a reality. For four years, I have poured every ounce of myself, my time, my energy, my money, and my love into the unforgiving and unyielding face of an artistic field, with little to say for the benefits reaped. Yet I push on. I write a blog every Sunday, and I make clothes and accessories at such a high quantity that most of them don't even end up in my possession within a month of their conception. And the only reason I can think of as to why I would continue contributing so much of myself to something that has made it noticeably clear it would rather have influencers who shop at Zara in attendance of their runways than academically trained enthusiasts, is because I love it. I love noticing the finishes on a garment when I'm thrifting, and I love picking what fabric would look best with what design. I love watching the Met Gala and knowing which designer would have been a better collaboration, and understanding the impact of seeing a real Fortuny dress in a glass case at the exhibit. I love writing about it and creating a space for people like me to share our opinions with one another. And that is what love is. Despite the questions or the struggles or the doubts, the sheer amount of love found within oneself is enough to face it head-on. Yet, unlike a career, love itself is not so easily narrowed down. It feels easy to say that love does not exist without its tests - a way to try its longevity and reassure that it can withstand the pits and valleys that all lives include, but it is this very thinking that creates room for love to hurt much more than it needs to. 

"Faith without evidence is just blind compliance". I watched a movie yesterday that sparked several thoughts, but the most prominent is the concept of belief. Believing in something so strongly that any other suggestion or thought is easily dismissed as false. Applying this thought to love has especially been weighing on my mind. My second year of college, I started off-and-on seeing a guy I had matched with on Tinder a few months back. It came naturally. We spoke when we felt like it, we called when we wanted to, and maybe once a month, we'd see each other in person to go on a nice, fancy date before resuming our separate yet collaborative lives. We had an understanding that, despite our very distinct lifestyles, so long as we both continued to care for one another as strongly as we did, and communicated where we were at in our relationship, there was no worry to be had; the love was enough. But before long, that mindset became much more reassuring for him than it was for me. He got comfortable, stopped checking in throughout the week, and canceled dates more frequently than I liked. I didn't feel the love so much as I was being told it was still there. We tried to discuss it and talk through the issues that were becoming ever more apparent as the days went by without communication turned to weeks, and then months. But the issue was not one to be fixed by words. The issue is that we never truly loved one another. The care we shared was true, but it never rose to become loving enough that our distance felt like nothing. There are times when love is more so something to be desired and aspired to, but cannot be forced into existence, and that is a lesson I will continue to take with me. Found love will always take the risk of being applied in the wrong places.

In my experiences, love has always been the end goal. And in many cases, that leads to events and people being lost as good memories, rather than flushed out relationships lost to the tension that forcing it can create. However, each time love arises, it presents new opportunities to learn how to handle it the next time around. College presented many such lessons, one of which in particular was something I will always keep in mind in most given situations. Freshman year, the first day in the dorms, I met a girl I would become nearly inseparable from. Every errand run was more time to spend together, every morning presented the opportunity for coffee and gossip. We each spent more time with each other than apart, and it became apparent very quickly that I had found my college best friend. The love we shared was genuine, but before long, the comfort of it settled into something else. She began showing up at my door when I was busy, getting angry when I made plans that didn't involve her. I was not avoiding her, and she was not too clingy; simply, our definitions of "love" were two very different things. By the Summer after sophomore year, it came to the culmination of everything we had not yet said out of fear of where it would leave us; we were too different. We expressed our love in different ways, we explored friendship in different ways, and we experienced each other in different ways. And it dawned on me for the first time that each person's relationship to love is different. Not only did we all want different kinds of love, but the same love could impact us on completely different plains based solely on how we wanted to feel them. In this case, the love was enough; we stayed a pair for as long as we could. But slowly, the love became something to be resented. Our definitions of it stretched too far from one another, and though the love was sufficient, it was not what we were looking for. 

Two years later, I would meet one of the few people whom I meaningfully call the love of my life. She loved so deeply, and cared even deeper. She was kind and courteous, and slowly these things blossomed into a friendship unlike any other. We liked each other's clothes, and frequently synced our hair dye to the same color at the same time. And what made the love that was becoming so strong even stronger is that we came from the same mind. We had each tried so frequently to love others, to give ourselves to those who were never the right fit. And it was this friendship and budding romance that made me come to a realization. Three years into living together, we have, of course, had our disagreements. There are times when we talk less than usual, and even times when anger is apparent. We bicker, but the defining trait is that there has never been a time in which such anger has led to resentment. Even on the rare occasion where it lies festering, waiting for a slight nudge to burst open at the seams, the sheer amount of love I feel just being found in her presence is enough to clear my conscience. Slowly, she became the answer to my question. Love is enough when nothing could ever outshine it. When no amount of anger, or distance, or sadness, or communication can halt the emotions behind a glimpse at the face of the person you love. 

Love is open to all, but the kind that leaves a lifelong impact is something often difficult to come by. It requires attention and care, but more importantly, it requires unity; two people with similar minds, loving each other in the way they both need to be loved, and want to love. My experiences with love have been strenuous, but educational to say the least. From each person, place, and thing that I have felt for so deeply within myself, I take a piece of them as I continue to grow, holding onto what they felt like, and what I feel like no longer in their company. I have learned from multiple relationships what kind of love hurts, and what kind of love heals, and slowly am coming to recognize what kind of love is enough. Never will I be bold enough to claim I have it figured out, as with all things, only time will tell. But right now, I am content with the conclusion my life has drawn, and anticipate all the new loves I will encounter in my life with the consciousness to feel it in the best ways.