Love in the 20Somethings
We’ve all had that one long, tumultuous, soul-chipping relationship. We’ve had our fair share of one night stands and “the one that seemed to never go away”. We’ve watched the screwed up scenarios our friends have been through, leaving us with a bad taste in our mouths. We’re fully conscious of our rampant insatiability, as well as the ever-rising divorce rate. We know what we want but we question it as soon as we think we’ve found it. We wonder how long we can stave off these emotions that cling to us like depraved zombies.
We feel a call to duty – to BE someone, to be someTHING. We have a hard time holding jobs or finding job satisfaction if we’re in it for “the long haul”. Like in relationships, we often meander from one opportunity to the next, searching for a more profitable venture, searching for something to soothe our needs, searching for something that adequately reflects ourselves back to us. We feel lost as we attempt to take care of ourselves fully, independently outside our parents’ realm of control for the first time… and we know we shouldn’t be trying to take care of someone else too, we shouldn’t be using another as a bandaid for our broken lives.. but many times we do it any ways, we smother them with promises and accept their utopian visions as a cure-all for this shattered and fragmented pastiche of roles, responsibilities, pleasures, needs, hopes and demands that encompass our 20something years.
It’s really a revolving maelstrom of contradictions. Nothing ever seems to fit together quite well. And according to our parents, it will never make sense in that way. There will always be bills you just can’t pay, despite working 60 hours/week. There will always be that one person you can’t fucking stand working with, that one impedance to your job satisfaction. There will always be the relative that falls deathly ill when everything else in your life finally seemed to flow in one direction. There will always be that one regret you deny you have and repress it, suffocate it with that blanket lie, “I HAVE NO REGRETS.”
And I step back, looking at this mess and I wonder… How the hell can we possibly fit a successful relationship in this mess? Won’t taking two of these biospheres of confusion just result in a landfill sized conundrum? Not only do you have to figure out YOUR life, goals, needs, responsibilities, etc… but now you have the incumbant burden of someone else’s chaos too. Many times our relationships come together like a piece of Dada art. We pool together our common interests and useful qualities until the end result is just one highly convoluted, obscure, dumb thing that SORT of resembles some kind of idea, some kind of statement that makes sense. In the end, it’s probably just a pile of crap… but we stand back like art critics and give it acroamatic meaning. Deep down you love the act of creating something new.
Part of you is a sadist. Part of you welcomes that pain just as a tattoo aficianado welcomes that first scar. For a moment you want to throw caution to the wind and believe that quite possibly two heads are better than one when it comes to problem-solving. On more occasions than I can accurately count, I’ve actually enjoyed other people’s most miserable self-lamenting declarations, paranoia, dramatic reasoning and unquenching need for my advice. Why? Because it’s a catharsis for my own problems. I can purge my emotions through theirs… I can set aside the conscious manifestations of my situation and delve into theirs. It’s always easier to counsel someone else than take the action necessary to improve YOUR lot. After the filth washes away, they feel like an empty bathtub and you feel the warm fragrant tide of appreciation, like a job well done; you’re a better person after having been the angel there to counsel your friend in his or her direst moment of need. You have a smug sense of realization at how much you’ve actually learned and accomplished through your own life thus so far, which is gauged by the ease at which the answers and profound knowledge pours from your lips or fingertips (depending on the mode of communication).
And communication is an interesting part of the 20somethings lives too. Nothing feels more satisfying to a greedy soul than the wordless communication embodied in sexual encounters. After the sensation is cut off, you realize you have to work beyond formula to sustain the other person’s attraction and interest. Sometimes this can be a real pain in the ass because HEY we’re in our 20s, we have jobs to maintain, we have other friends making demands on our time and wittiness, we have families, responsibilities, hobbies that need cultivating, fitness goals, cats to feed and an extensive roster of travel plans to make because we’re young and Goddamnit, we’re going to make use of our young, able bodies before we’re eligible for that seniors discount at Golden Griddle.
O the agony of our tortured minds! Thankfully this is all repressed beneath the surface and we move ahead like little wound-up toys, clanking our cymbals with neverending monkey smiles, constantly going until we hit an obstacle and subsequently tip over.
That’s when we really soak up the luxury of having a caring partner to wind us back up again, filling us with the sort of elated energy you just can’t find anywhere else – with the exception of certain strains of street drugs. Just like street drugs, there’s no guarantee how long this high will last or if you will build up a tolerance to this feeling, pushing you back to the depraved depths of an addiction that completely supercedes any specific person, spiraling into an indescribable faceless voracity. It’s always a gamble but occasionally we like to engage in reckless and irresponsible behavior. Every person has their own source of compulsion – whether it’s this self-destructive recklessness.. or an enlightened tendency towards utopian idealism.. or the peaking curiosity and quest for new knowledge… or an extension of our “spontaneous, adventurous” personality… or perhaps we just see it as a vehicle, a means toward an end.
Despite this occasional giving-in, generally when it comes to actual relationships the 20somethings are much more guarded and conscientious about where this sort of scenario can end up. We’ve probably wasted far too much time with people who have let us down, warped our thinking and robbed our souls blind already. We operate under a pretense that says: You might be awesome but it’s going to take a lot of tenacity to tear this wall down; you can only get as close as I let you. And that’s where our modes of impersonal communication come in handy, our logically casual mind tells us. All the while, deep down there’s this volcanic urge to indulge and let go of this routine way of thinking to do something a little bit crazy, a little bit foolish, a little bit fun. We’re torn between perceived patterns and the nagging suspicion that our past has just been one continuous series of isolated incidents, having no connection with the current love interest that stands innocently before us.
In many ways the depth of our experience is measured by the depth at which we know others. The deeper we know another person, the more our own innate nature rises to the surface. We love others for what they reveal in us… which ironically is also the same reason we grow to hate others. It’s all a blatant and inescapable paradox. Therefore our lives will always fluctuate between the two poles – independence and neediness, whether we’re willing to acknowledge it as that or not. If only we could just stop the teeter-tauter in the middle somewhere… if only we could find the perfect counterbalance to our soul… if only we could find childish enjoyment in another and gaze longingly across all the chaotic distractions happening on the playground and find that moment of peace and tranquility. This could make us happy. If only it could stay. If only we weren’t preconditioned and exposed to this world and all its fierce demands and complexities, life could be simple just following a series of unconscious impulses that could never lead us into harm’s way.
But you know, I’ve accepted being in my mid-20s. When you get to this exhaustive point of realization, the choices are made for you on the matter. With each new person that slips into my life, I savor them like a bittersweet morsel, letting them melt on my tongue and give me a taste of what I crave, which will have to suffice for the sake of simplicity. I didn’t want the entire chocolate bar any ways, with its fat, its complexity, its sugar-coated addictive qualities. While open to the possibility that one day an extravagant package will be on my doorstep offering a no-strings-attached chance for indulgence in something far more wonderful than I could ever imagine…. I find myself resting complacently in this emotional purgatory with a heart full of wonder and a head full of thoughts.
