absence makes the heart grow (longer).

It's been a year since I've been in love. It's been a year since it left, and I think I've missed having someplace to put mine more than I've missed its recipient. That's not to say he hadn't earned it. Christmas went by blissfully enough, full of as much cheer as we could muster. It just didn't carry over.

I've had a lot to say about love as of late, perhaps because when you have it, it seems far less valuable than when you don't, and maybe I'm guilty of taking it for granted. So I'll refer to a post I made a year ago, a couple of weeks before Christmas.

"If I could change the way I remember things, like if I remembered more birthdays and fewer heartbreaks, something truly good could probably happen. It almost is, except that it's tricky and I'm stuck right now in the very middle of the deciding moment that makes or breaks the momentum that's been gaining on me, which has the potential to propel me far enough over the edge that I can't see anything behind me. I'd like that.

Fingers crossed, it's not broken. I'm still not broken. Fuck you memory."

That said, I'm going to lunch with my father today. It took months of therapy, but I'm going to take him as he is, and try to keep loving him even though he sometimes can't remember the next day that we even talked. I guess I still possess enough hope that a little bit of it will get through, which is to say I'm lucky at this moment to be brimming over because there's so much more to be wasted.

As for that other guy, he can keep what I gave him. After the initial rise and fall, I thought I'd like to take it back. Instead I've just found that love's the sort of thing that the more you prune and trim it, the faster it flowers and grows. Even now, when he comes around, I still have enough to keep me from forgetting the times that were better, even if we can't have them like that anymore. Even if we sometimes still consider having them again, but don't. Just now, I'm reminded of a time when not wanting love was more important than having it, and yes, even that has its place.

Even so, it's a sunny winter morning, and I'd like to be sitting on the receiving end of any such feeling. Better yet, I'd like to be sharing it. A little give and take would do a shit-ton of good these days.