The Love Haters

by Katherine Center

Could not having underwear on in a moment like this cause you to suffocate?

I wasn’t afraid of bathing suits. I was afraid of being seen.

He was supposed to be all muscle, no heart. Except, I guess—the heart is a muscle.

When you’re in love, you don’t want to make other plans—you just want to make plans with the person you’re in love with. That’s the whole thing!”

The truth is, it’s hard to make yourself ask for something that you know the person you’re asking doesn’t want to give.

“No one’s born fearless,” Rue said. “You have to earn it.” Then she added, gesturing at the swimsuit dangling from my hand, “Every time you have to be brave, you get to be a little braver next time. That’s what life is for.”

“It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks if you’re having fun. And all the fun is in color.”

I felt panicked. Trapped. Caged inside my body. And all I wanted, all I could even think about wanting, was out. But there was no way out. That’s the thing about having a body. You only get one, and you’re trapped in it from beginning to end.

The funny thing about the internet is that it’s basically a collective hallucination. If you don’t join in, it doesn’t exist. I mean, it does … but in another very real way, it doesn’t.

The thing you’re afraid of is never the thing you should be afraid of.

That longing to be looked at lovingly? That longing to be lovable … that’s really also so much about wanting to be valued, and seen, and connected, and safe, and just deeply, fundamentally okay? Maybe we didn’t have to outsource that. Maybe we could fill that longing for ourselves.

I just suddenly understood in a whole new, sun-breaking-through-the-clouds way that even if we do eternally need and long and want to be seen … maybe the most important eyes doing the looking are our own.

“Love is the worst.” But he was smiling at me. “It makes you jealous. And possessive. And desperate. It upsets your orderly life. It haunts you, and worries you, and gets you drunk with your brother. It tempts you. It makes you say yes when you should say no, and it stops you from saying yes when that’s the only thing you want to do. It keeps you up all night with worry, and then makes you run out of fuel because you can’t stop searching for a woman on a sinking houseboat.”

I don’t know what shape time itself is, but I know our minds move through it in spirals—returning over and over to the mysteries that hook us, to the questions we’ve never been able to answer, to the pieces that don’t quite fit. It’s the same questions, over and over—and the only thing different is us.

It was about the deep, enduring comfort that comes from looking at your life for exactly what it is, and exactly how it’s unfolded—and really seeing it. The past can’t hurt you now like it did then. The story of your life is always full of mystery. You can unfold it on a table like a map, and study it, and understand it in new ways. It’s not different, but you are.

You can look around with your own eyes. You can find your own details. Notice for yourself what matters—and decide what it means.

We’re here to be alive. To keep going. To find all kinds of ways to thrive anyway. We’re here to feel it all. To love and cry and love some more. We’re here to rescue ourselves—and everybody else—in every way that we can.

She really has let herself go. And as Rue would say: How glorious.

In the best stories, you’re in it. You’re a part of it. It’s happening all around you—and to you. You’re not just witnessing the characters—you are the characters. You merge with them in this utterly profound way, climbing into their skin and experiencing it like it’s real—seeing what they see, and hearing what they hear, but also feeling their emotions with them and as them: hoping for what they hope for, loving what they love, wanting what they want. Like it’s your life. Like it’s you.

Nora Ephron once said something that I think about all the time: “Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape.” She’s so right. Stories take us out of ourselves and deeper into ourselves at the exact same time. They are specific and universal. Big and small. Something and everything.

Along the journey of a romance, we become those characters—and then we do all kinds of healing things. We rethink assumptions, and overcome prejudices, and learn to see more clearly. We soften and empathize and nurture. We go deeply into ourselves—and break up the emotional scar tissue we all carry from our lifetimes of hurts and losses and disappointments.

Trust me, and trust yourself: love stories are the best kind of therapy. They aren’t shallow, they’re deep. Start looking, and you’ll see it, too. Love stories make us better at love. In all directions. And getting better at love, of course, means getting better at life.