• Tweet

• Tweet

I am in love. The ‘“Climb every mountain, ford every stream” while shouting in undying passion for my love because the hills are alive’ kind of love. That ‘ooey, gooey, makes everyone sick to their stomachs it’s so sweet and sticky’ kind of love.

Why is this significant? Well, I was a love-hater just merely half a year ago. I was that person who would roll her eyes at someone like me, and just say to me, “Get the fuck over it already”. In fact, I did. I said that. Out loud. To real people. Worse yet, I said it to some of my closest friends. My utter disdain for public displays of affection was both ferocious and adamant. Romance felt like a construct rather than an extension of emotional expression. Love seemed like an obligation, a constant game of one-upmanship where the stakes just get higher. Love. What the fuck is love, anyway? It’s just a word.

And marriage? Oh dear god, don’t get me started on marriage. I almost feel sorry for all my bygone lovers who had to listen to knowledge gleaned from the women’s studies minor I earned, just to rant on the origin of marriage. Marriage as eternal love? Ha! More like a way to enslave women and for the government to earn tax on them (since they were considered property, you know, back in the day).

What was it, you might wonder, that turned me into such a bitter curmudgeon at such a (relatively) young age? Same old story, I guess – I’d been in a good number of relationships, many of which left me so heartbroken it was hard to pick myself off the floor. After a particularly bad year, it was enough. I removed my heart from my sleeve and tossed it. It just wasn’t worth it.

Sure, since then I had other rendezvous. I even said the big “L” again, though it was more calculated, measured, and guarded. Love was something that could be rationalized. Marriage was something that could be brokered. Everything occurred in it’s due course, was controlled, and was expected.

Everything, that is, except this.

I was in rather deep denial over how badly the last relationship had hurt me. I proclaimed, nearly the next day after the breakup, that I didn’t give a damn and that I was over it. The breakup, while not my idea, was just the due course of our relationship. Though I had plotted it differently, I rationalized, it would have ended eventually and she had been gracious enough to do me a favor. My love and I, we connected then, while I was stoically broken and when I still thought I knew all the answers. I dismissed the her, back then, since I would need to grieve for the prescribed time (mathematically, it is half the time you were with someone, but I figured that in lesbian terms meant about 1/4th of the time, so I should be good in about 6 months, give or take). I told her that it wasn’t going to go anywhere. I saw other people. I even ended it with her. It just wasn’t in my logical and methodical equations.

Now, let me take a quick pause to explain the significance of the break. Over those many heartbreaks, I realized that using “lets breakup” as fighting ammo just isn’t cool. To combat this, I’ve implemented the “a break is a break” rule, meaning that if you break up with me (or vice-versa), then there was a damned good reason to do it.  No looking back. A break is permanent.

So, when I ended it with her, I really had no intention of ever seeing her again. Ever. But something odd had happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. But, there was so much fear. So much fear that something would go wrong. Well, I called “fear” “reality”. After all, she’s German. I’m American. She’s here for just a few more months. I have a job here in Chicago, with no potential to transfer elsewhere. Where the hell can a relationship with limited time go? To the short-term-no-commitments bin, and that’s where I tried to keep it.

Maybe she found me at just the right time in my personal quest of self-exploration. Maybe we’re so compatible that everything is just what love is supposed to be. Maybe, just maybe, there is no explanation, because that’s what love is, something irrational that just kind of happens. Whatever it was, it was as though my heart melted – literally. Really, I hate such cheesy metaphors, so I apologize for all those cynics out there (don’t forget, I was you!). It was literally as though I’d put my heart in a cryogenic freezer and then took it out, just in time to be warmed by this wonderful and amazing woman.

Regardless of what it was, I couldn’t stay away from her for long. I invited her to the L Stop launch party, where I had convinced myself it would just be a hook-up. At Thanksgiving, I specifically skipped out on plans elsewhere to cook her a traditional meal, convincing myself that it was just that I was showing her a true American T-day. No, there wasn’t a possibility that I actually liked the girl. What’s done is done. No looking back.

Something, though…something was different. I felt my pulse quicken. Breathe, breathe, Tina, get it under control, I thought. Her perfume lingered in my car after she left and my pulse raced. My thoughts wandered off to her during the day. My heart beat uncontrolled within my chest. It felt like anxiety. But it felt so much better than anxiety. What the fuck? What the hell is going on with me?

Fortunately, though, I was too intoxicated with her to think straight. I’d blurt out things like, “Why don’t you come over (again) tonight” before I could think them through. My poor roommate had to listen to “Why the hell do I like her?” over and over again while I picked at the teeny tiniest minuscule faults wherever I could manage to imagine them. This eventually morphed to, “Why can’t I STOP liking her” and eventually an all-out, “Oh god, I think I’m in LOVE with her”.

All the reasoning in the world couldn’t rationalize this away. In fact, despite our separate nationalities, there was no legitimate reason holding us apart. I could always move there – after all, gay marriage is legal in Germany (if it were to come to that). She could move here – she has an in-demand job that could always warrant her own work visa, no gay marriage needed. She’s smart, funny, gentle, and crazy hot – what the fuck was there not to love?

Well, after leaving behind my own hangups, and letting it just all unfold with no plan…it turns out there’s nothing not to love. Was it…was it that I was just too scared to try love again? Scared? Me? But, it turns out I was. I kept thinking that this wonderful and amazing woman would just walk out of my life (and, trust me, I’d given her plenty of reasons to). But I let it all go, and decided to put it all on the line. Instead, with a shaky voice, while we snuggled on the couch, I’d leaned over to her ear. Just as much because I was scared I’d fuck it up in German as much as I was scared to say it out loud, I whispered, “Ich liebe dich”.

You May Also Like:

• Lesbians and their Celebrity Girl Crushes
• I’ll take a one way ticket to Lala Land please
• How My Identity Evolved As A Result of My Girlfriends Gender Identity

Back to blog