Dancing

Love is like a maypole.

For some people, it is the ribbons. It is brightly coloured, and always moving, and something to dance with. They wrap themselves with it, and - over time and with each dance - the patterns get more complicated, and richer, and more beautiful, and every dance brings its own movement with it.

For others, it is the pole. It is built into them - a part of what they are made of - and they are rigid with it, and always standing still, and unable to function without it. There is no colour and no movement in love, because it is simply needed to keep them upright. Without it there is nothing to pin the colours and the movement to. There is nothing to dance around. Without love, everything beautiful just ends up in a messy heap on the floor.

For me, I have finally realised - at the not very tender age of 28 - that love is the pole.

It always has been. It is part of the fabric of me. I have looked for love, and needed it, and wanted it, and chased it, even before I really knew what it was. From the books I read as a child, and the stories and music I listened to, and the poetry that made me cry - from the loneliness that has always been a part of me - love has been woven into my middle, and it is - and always has been - what motivates me, what inspires me, what scares me, and what keeps me upright. I simply cannot remember a time when I have not been falling in love, or trying to fall in love, or hoping to fall in love, or having my heart broken by love, or imagining that it is being broken by love when it isn't. I cannot remember a time when my entire being has not been focused on love: on the search for it, on the gain of it, on the loss of it. It is - I have finally realised - the point of me, and it is what I have built my life on. Waiting for it, finding it, and keeping it. Hoping - without ever realising that I am hoping - that it will save me. Complete me. Fix me. That love will one day make everything better.

It has not. And, I've finally realised, it will not. It will never save me. It is asking too much, and love is just not strong enough. It has not made me happy: even at my most loving, and my most loved, there was still a hole in the middle of me. It has not made me safe and whole: I am still alone, I am still scared, and I still feel like a fragment of something bigger. The more pressure I have put on love, the more I have demanded from it, the more I have wanted it, the less it has stood it: the faster it has buckled, the faster it has fled. I have thrown my life away for love - always somewhere else in my head, with someone else, instead of with myself in the present - and I have done it willingly, knowingly, and consciously. I have encouraged myself, as a 'romantic'. And it has not saved me. It has not made anything better at all.

Which can only lead me to one conclusion: the books and the poetry and the music that have made me who I am are all wrong. Love should not be in the middle of me. Love should not be what motivates me or inspires me. It should not be the pole.

It has taken me 28 years of loving, and losing, and yearning, and hurting - and throwing my life around to make room for it - to finally realise that the only thing love should ever be is the ribbons. That it should not be what I am made of: that it should not be what helps to keep me upright. That I have to be able to stand up without it. Otherwise it will always be rigid for me, it will always keep me standing still, and it will always, always fail.

Love should be the colours I tie to myself; the thing that makes me and my life more beautiful, not simply functional. I should be able to dance with it, and make patterns with it, instead of always being rigid with fear that if it disappears everything else will come down with it. I should be able to lose a ribbon now and then without falling over.

The only thing I can do is start again, and do it now. The only thing I can do is take myself completely away from love, and from the hope of it, and from the search for it, and learn who to be without it. To learn what I am made of on my own. To rebuild without love at the centre. And I don't even know where to start, or how long it will take. I don't know who to be, or what to do, and it is absolutely terrifying. But it is also absolutely necessary. Because I've realised, now - finally - that love is not the point of me. It is not all I am. I still exist without it: I am of value and importance without loving, and without being loved.

After a lifetime built on fairytales and happy endings, I am going to start looking for something else to hang my happiness from. So that perhaps one day love will be something I can wrap around myself without pressure, and dance with, and enjoy.

Something that will make my life more beautiful, instead of simply existing to hold me up off the floor.