You know that Hozier song, the one that goes (I’m singing) I fall IN love just a little oh a little bit Every DAY with someONE new. You know the one.
I feel this all the time — strangers, yes, of course. People I encounter for a few minutes at a clinic or on a text thread, journalists who interview me with warmth and curiosity, readers who send me messages or approach me at book talks to tell me their stories, people with whom I spend an hour or a day and never see again. But I feel it—the someone new-ness—with oldest most-known friends and lovers too.
Depending on the season, and the light, and how much sleep I’ve gotten, and the angle at which someone holds their face, or the exact shape and pressure of their hand on my back, or the deftness of their driving, or the curiosity they express in someone else’s well-being—at least once a day I will think, Oh! You.
One of my favorite exercises when I was writing the book was to close my eyes and call forward the face (or hands, or scrawled signature) of the person I was writing to. Not of the anonymous future reader or literary critic, of whom I was terrified, but the person or people I’d met who had led me to the words I was putting on paper. Who’d taught me about whatever emotion or experience I was trying to capture in a few paragraphs or pages.
I think my falling in love, over and over again, is this. I think it’s the same. What is falling in love but paying close attention? What is more romantic than the memory of a sweaty strand of hair across a flushed cheek or a joke someone told, an arm squeeze or a text message or a voicemail you could recite by heart? It’s a different species than a crush (because what is a crush but a lack of information, etc.). It’s the opposite of hoping someone sees you, pursues you, chooses you. It’s not about you at all.
It’s a turning outward from yourself. It’s a way to avoid yourself, for sure, to escape from yourself. But it’s also a way to offer pieces of yourself up for sharing, not hoarding or analyzing or shame-tinted self-examining. It’s the opening of a door and no rush to walk through it, the slow unfolding of a quilt and no need to decide if and when and how you want to get all tangled up together underneath it. It’s laid across the bed and it’s making the room more beautiful. It’s adding colors and texture and another way—should you want or need it—to get warm.
Over the last few days, I’ve been writing and mailing some analog love letters—licking envelopes! Pulling stickers and stamps from drawers, pulling poetry and illustrations from notebooks and yearbooks. I promised these love letters to folks who donated to abortion funds in exchange for one of them. (I, who often need the siren song of a little treat in order to finish any simple small task, love to provide a little treat). I thought it might dilute their power, to write so many, but it only extended my own pleasure further into the week. Oh! You, I’d think, writing an apartment number down. Oh!, I’d remember, looking up the spelling of a last name, You.
Anyway. People, man. In a week when a few of them wielded their obscene amounts of power and wealth to maim and kill, to impoverish and imprison, in a year when so many of them suffered and died for lack of attention and therefore lack of love from those in power….so many others reached for my hand, put their hands on my back, called my name, sent me photos of wildflowers they’d taken on mountains where they—miracle of miracles that this ever happens, in this world of billions—thought of me. People asked other people if they needed help, if they wanted a break, if it feels okay when they do this, or this. Someone said “No problem” or (one of my favorite things we say to each other) “You’re good,” to someone who bumped into them and caused them to spill their drink, told someone they’re beautiful, told someone they’re funny, told someone they love them, gave money to abortion funds, gave money to abortion funds, gave money to abortion funds.
If you want a snail-mailed love letter, you know what to do (give money to abortion funds and then send me a message with your address).
If you want to fall in love, there are probably as many ways to do that as there are people (and places and animals and songs and books and rock formations and bodies of water) to fall in love with. But I suggest paying attention to someone, and then to how that payment feels. I suggest telling them about it, maybe even in great detail, if it wouldn’t be weird or unwelcome; if, for example, they ask you to tell them, in exchange for a donation or as a dose of the lonely-killing medicine we all must take regularly, in order to survive this mess. Or, maybe, just writing it down.