What the women talked about when they talked about love
Love is what people always talk about, want to talk about, try to dig out from oneself or others. Love is all around, on tv shows, in films, being the motif in every book you read, between people whether lovers or family or friends, beneath people’s consciousness.
Love is cliche, because it has been talked about too much for too long, and we use up all the possibility of having something new to talk about.
Love is painful, when we give it out too much and too passionately, and we don’t have it back from the one we give our love to.
Love is exhausting, especially we make it, but even just feeling it, attempting to feel it, we might be worn out.
Even so, even if it’s cliche, painful, exhausting, boring, harmful, threatening, we are still obsessed with it, with discussing it, with owning it. Maybe we just love to love.
They were talking about the sign of love. When do they feel it, or say, when does it reveal itself to them?
It’s when I find myself long for the body, one woman said. When I want to touch the arm, kiss the neck, tussle the hair, caress the chest and back. Then I want him, mostly him, to touch my face, kiss my mouth, caress my earlobes. We can spend most of our day tangling together, tirelessly explore each other, feeling the warmth of our bodies until we have the same body temperature, and when it’s like that, we become one. We melt into each other. A part of him is in me, and a part of me is in him. When we are apart, we are not apart.
She continued, and the touch on the body shows the intimacy. Intimacy is the ultimate love. Words can conceit, languages are ambiguous, promises means nothing. The body, on the other hand, is real. It cannot be fake, it is not sheer imagination, it’s here and now. The touch on the body expresses desire, comfort, trust, love, especially love, and when the touch from the other party falls on my body, they become mutual. With our body touched, connected, we build up the bridge, mend the wounds, erase loneliness. This is intimacy, the recognition of no longer being alone, the reassurance of being fully understood.
She smiled and said what might be the conclusion: the exhilaration, the ecstasy, the otherworldly high.
It doesn’t work the way to me, the other woman sighed. What did she mean? Was she saying the body did not attract her? Or was she complaining the dissatisfaction of the touch on the body? Of course I would want his body, or her body, if I have a feeling for them, but it’s not the sign, the desire for the body is the consequence. The sign, she said, is the forgetfulness. When I seem to fall in love, when I’m on the edge of loving, I want to memorise everything, from their voice to their little gesture, from the mole on their finger to the way their hands wave when they speak. The more I think, the less I find myself able to recall. I replay the montage of us being together, and the more I play, it’s like the videotape goes broken after overuse, the less vivid the memories are. I can’t remember the colour of their hair. I can’t think of how the edge of their mouth is lifted when they smile. Their voice cannot be heard. Their face becomes vague. All I have is a segment of the most trivial thing, such as the wrinkle of their t-shirt, they standing on my right, where we walked pass. Sometimes, I have impression of things we talk about, like the food we review, or the weather being too warm, but they are in the form of words, as if I am rereading a novel. My memories are limited, they confine me. The forgetfulness is bittersweet. Only by experiencing it can I know the extent of my love. At the same time, the forgetfulness weakens my love. When we are together, before we even set apart, before they are even out of my sight, I already worry about my forgetting. Sometimes worse, in that I feel I already forget them. I’m scared that one day when I turn my head and face them, I’d forget who I am with, and I wouldn’t remember my feeling, my immense love, my deepest tender.
Compared to mine, yours is simpler, less complicated, and perhaps more enjoyable, though forgetting can be frightening, said the third woman. And the lust for the body is the most joyous sign of love I’ve heard so far, she commented, but the other two did not entirely agree. Lust is tiring, and lust is painful, when it cannot be satisfied. Can you imagine wanting the body for the whole day every day? It feels like your body is burning, and so is your heart and mind and every stream of consciousness. The woman whose sign of love is the longing for body said so. And what if the body ends up not as beautiful as you anticipate, what if the connection is weaker than you want it to be, what if the magic of the body dwindle as time goes by? You’d feel at loss, and you question yourself as well as him, or her, to some of you. But what is the sign to you?
I’d take them as god when I love someone, she said, her eyes getting dim. To me, my lover is the highest existence, the greatest being, perfect than the most perfect. The feeling accumulates, which means, at first, I only admire parts of characteristics of theirs, but as I know them more, I admire more of what they have and what they are. I love their confidence. I envy their self-assurance. I feel jealous of their beauty and youth. There are two sides of the coin. Beneath those adoration, I have the hatred to myself. I hate my lack of persistence. I resent my cowardice. I loathe my ageing even if it’s too minor to be noticed, actually. It’s got so obvious to me now. How small and insignificant I am, and how dare such an existence as mine get close to the greatest? What do they see in me? Why do they choose me? Am I a joke? Are they taking me as a joke? Or are they joking?
Essentially, what I cannot bear is my worshipping to them. It’s always toward the end of the relationship that I realise how unreasonable I had been. They are not as confident as they seem to be, and they shouldn’t be, for they are not as good as they think they are. They are not perfect than the most perfect, they are flawed, if not more than some people I’ve met, if not more than I am. They are not god, they are human beings, and they make mistakes, and I make mistakes, so we are equal. Deep down I must know the truths, that they are not worth worshipping, that we are mere human, that if I always consider them the perfection in the universe there’s no way we can be together. I bury it deep. I refuse to admit it. I immerse myself in the state of worshipping, and the conflict of keeping the false worship. Do I, in fact, love myself more than I love them, because I love the imagination I am able to fabricate, instead of themselves? When I start to worship them, she concluded, I know I’m in love, and I know one day, I’m going to fall out of love.
What is the purpose of talking about love? To understand oneself? Or to understand other people’s ways of love so that we can incorporate it into ours and we will have multiple ways of love, and so we will never fail in love?
Why were they talking about the sign of love? To know oneself? To see more clearly when the seed of love has not yet grown? To curb it or to water it?
What can talking about love bring to us? Can we know the essence of love by talking it through? Can we choose the right person and avoid the wrong one in doing so? Can we have it last longer by having it talked and talked?
Or it’s just something that’s meant to be talked about?
