I fall in love so quickly, so easily. Some would say unwise in how unguarded I am with my affection — which isn’t to say I always make it obvious (as I in fact have a sense of propriety!), only that I freely drape the people and objects I encounter with an invisible adoration. In the face of something marvelous I don’t hesitate to let out oohs and ahhs. I gush about it in my journal or with a few friends. I pay homage. When a possibility, I caress, desire to possess, obsess. My many little beloveds become part of me merely by astounding me with what, or who, I am not.

If you spend any time with me at all, you would likely witness at least one instance of my dramatic swooning over my husband Michael’s entire personhood (yes, yes, how embarrassing), the beautiful faces of my friends, a really good bowl of noodles, an even better bottle of wine from ancient vine, the sound of Rosalía’s voice, Palawan’s beaches, any language I do not speak, the clever geometry of innovative packaging, red lipstick on women (I mean!), or the lyric we’ve not got long you know / to bask in the afterglow.1

This isn’t just a list of some of my favorite things. Really, they are the subjects of a moment of eros — that which, says Plato, drives the pursuit of beauty, fulfillment, the divine. At each encounter, an invisible, uncrossable chasm reveals itself, and from it rises a heady cloud of desire. To want to know (what does that word mean, how did they create that), to feel (the sublime from wading into the bluest waters, from touching someone’s skin for the first time), to attempt the impossible leap (“let me love you”). Oh, shudder, sigh, what a high.

In The Agony of Eros2, Byung-Chul Han argues that the crisis of love today derives from “the erosion of the Other.” Faced with difference, which often implies discomfort, we insist on either sameness — look, we’re not so different after all!3 — or its destruction — this is a threat to who we are and what we stand for! Both seemingly opposite forces enforce the same thing: homogeneity.

How boring. Cowardly, too. What, are we so fragile as to be unable to handle a challenge to preconceived notions of ourselves? The world must be exactly as we imagined it?

Personally, I strive every day to not be so delicate. A snowflake, as the kids say (I am kids). The ease with which I pour out my love into the world happens to be a good exercise towards such a pursuit. The sheer vulnerability it requires annihilates and forges me simultaneously, again and again. I am unlike and like both. There is something of me that is steadfast, and much that changes, grows. The freeflow of love through me shows this.

For better or worse, I could never hide my feelings for too long. So much of the world is ugly and cruel, so when I find something beautiful I don’t restrain my wonder. When I love someone in whatever sense, they will know. Whatever consequences follow, I try to take in stride — after, of course, many, many years of badly handling them. One’s youth deserves some grace. My tenderness has often been mistaken as flirtation, my enthusiasm as naivete, curiosity as insensitivity, my sensibilities seen as a mark of my soft character. I wouldn’t change a thing, though. There is no way to experience love and its many ecstasies while protecting myself from betrayal, heartbreak, embarrassment, rejections, and all the usual hazards of a lived life. Through it, the edges of myself have been made sharper, even as they bleed seamlessly into the Other.

It is with proof of my own malleability in the face of love and its alchemical nature that I turn my attention to the world and try to shape it into something better; even when it feels so futile.

Simon Critchley, in examining the concept of decreation and self-annihilation in mystical writing, says: “Writing about love makes us hypocrites, and all those who engage in it are fakers, claiming to push themselves out of the way while proclaiming their big, loud, shiny centers of self.”4

This is not about me, and yet it is.

Those who love the chase and not what comes after know something about this. In these endless pursuits, these great distances that seduce us into closing, life feels the most vivid. So much is still unknown; maybe forever unknowable. Eros at work.

That person in college that made me want to show up to class on time, even though we’ve never spoken to each other. A subtle graze on the back of a hand between new lovers still finding a name for what they are. The rush of moving to a foreign city to begin a new life. Finally being alone in a warm room with a handsome stranger you’ve been laughing with all night. Grabbing drinks with a friend you suddenly realized you want to keep for a very long time.

All this is the easy part; the kindling always catches fire. Sustaining it — beholding the Other in their unfathomable strangeness without consuming, reducing, or destroying them — requires much work and imagination. A secret art of nurturing both intimacy and mystery. Eros fed through friction and distance.

No matter how many years I spend living with Michael, there will always be corners of his mind and soul unreachable to my knowing. No matter how much I read, travel, and see, the world will never run out of things with which to stun me. These thoughts that once instilled fear now inspire awe. How incredible to never reach the end of long, beautiful roads. I wonder what strange winds will fall on me next.8