Campfyre Stories

I’m not a sappy, sentimental person most of the time.  I rarely cry at movies, I don’t think I’ve ever cried over a book.  I’m outwardly pretty emotionally cold most of the time.  I remember when I was 9 and my grandmother died, I played the same sad song over and over and over again until it moved me to tears.  It wasn’t that I was unaffected, it was just that I didn’t have that outward emotional reaction.

Some would say this is unhealthy.

Sometimes it is.  Sometimes when things get really a bad, a good cry can do a world of good, but the older I get, the harder it is to force it if it just won’t come on its own, so I do the best I can.

But, I think, it only really applies to sadness.  I share my joy and laugh freely (as almost anyone can attest).  When I’m angry, I stand up for myself and remedy the situation.  I love with abandon, but…  I’m not allowed to share that with everyone because of the societal rules that are put on it.

I can tell my girls that I love them.  I can tell my family I love them.  With the boys…  not so much, though.  There are a couple I can say "…and that’s why I love you," but it’s more likely to come out as "…and that’s why you’re my friend."  Love is a four-letter word and its use is restricted specifically to romance among non-relations.

*sigh*

But I do love freely.  And when I say "love" I don’t mean "marry me".  It makes me wish that there was a wholly different word that means "in love" or "romantic love" because love is so much more than the boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife thing.

It’s hard for me, because every now and again, I find myself leaning toward that "in love" with people who I really just love, but can’t tell.  I think it’s something that’s been a problem in a lot of my romantic relationships - that the taboo of feeling love means that the only way to say it and feel it and have it be acceptable is to be lovers.  That sucks.

When I was a teenager, I adored the freedom of cuddling with my friends.  Of feeling like I could sit in M’s lap or lean against him with his arm around my shoulders and have it just be what it was.  It wasn’t until much MUCH later that I found out that he…   all the hes…  wanted it to be more, but were ok with taking what they could get.  I would have lived a happier, if more naive, life not having known about the "wanting more".

I probably only have one male friend now who I can stand next to with my arm around his waist and his arm around my shoulder and not feel like we’re doing something wrong.  He knows that I’ve "adopted" him as my brother and there’s no weird tension.  We’re both touchy-feely people and it’s not awkward, but he’s rare in my life these days.

And the problem is that my outlet for this lack of outward, identified, pure love for the people who are important in my life is to write love songs.  Romantic love songs.  Unrequited love songs.

Not written to the men who I wish I could tell in simple terms that they are important to me, but to men who I have created a fantasy of romantic love around.  I’ve fallen so far into this idea that I’m not even really sure what "in love" means anymore.  Not because I haven’t felt it, but because I’m questioning my own definition and the line between what it’s acceptable to say and what might make people uncomfortable simply because I have different parts.

I’ve realized that this is really my genre.  When people ask "what kind of songs do you write?" the answer is love songs.  Sometimes it’s not about a boy, or it’s some kind of departure, but fundamentally, they’re all love songs.  I may very well be in love with the concept of love in all its forms.

With one primary exception, I fall in and out of infatuation with people pretty regularly.  I fall for someone long enough to write a song about the feelings I’m experiencing and then I move on.  Sometimes it’s a friend of mine, sometimes it’s someone I only know a little, sometimes it’s someone I have created in my head, but it’s generally pretty brief and I get over it and move on to the next crush.

When I don’t get over it, it’s a little scary.  When I get over it for a little while and it comes back, it’s more than a little scary.  When it’s there so strongly that writing a song doesn’t even mitigate the feelings, it’s downright terrifying.  Since I’ve been really writing songs (let’s call it the past 4-5 years), that has only happened once…  and hasn’t gone away.

And I’m not one to be weepy and sentimental and gushing.  I’m a lot more prone to assuming that He already knows and isn’t interested or he would have said something.  This is stupid, I am aware, but it’s less stupid than losing an important person from my life entirely.  So what did I do?  Well, I wrote a song.  Not about him, but about my own knowledge of the risks of saying something and the difficulty of not saying anything and being resigned to never actually acting on the feelings that simply won’t go away.

And it’s pretty.  It’s another unrequited, romantic love song.  But some part of me can’t help but wonder if I could branch out from this niche I’ve locked myself into and stop myself from falling in and out of infatuation, if only it were possible to tell more of the people I love platonically how much they mean to me, in the words that define it in my head, and in my heart.