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Ljubezen. Ljubav. Love.
For yourself, your friends or even strangers.
When I was thinking about love and this column, I was somehow channelling my inner Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. You know, imagining I’m sitting in an apartment in New York City with a closet full of designer clothes and my only concern is my next date and what to write for my next column. Well, apart from the fact that we’re complete polar opposites in our lifestyles, are we really that different? Is falling in love with yourself or finding your significant other really that different for people? The places where we could potentially meet them are probably not the same, but the fundamental human need and desire to be loved is.
Whenever in a relationship, I always have a feeling that I’m a part of a threesome. It’s always me + my partner + my work and everybody wants and deserves an equal share of my love and attention. It’s not easy, not at all. My love for my work is endless, the emotional attachment is strong, and all of this can be super hard to handle if you don’t share or understand the same level of passion that I have. It’s a constant battle of who wants or needs more and, in the end, how much I can possibly give?
I often wonder if love can ever be simple. Passion has multiple times exceeded the limits of my mental and physical capacity and I’m totally aware of wanting too much. To expect so much of myself in my 24 hours is insane. If you are even a little like me, I suggest you inhale and exhale. Breathe. Pause in the vortex of constantly chasing your dreams ‘coz it’s fucked up. You get fucked up. Always wanting to give more because you think you are not giving enough to your loved ones. I’m tired. This grind is killing me, and this is not the first time I am writing about this. I’m fed up with the same questions and beating myself down over the same answers. To think about what I am without Pirate Piška. Only Tjaša. Only Piška. Separated but forever together. Balancing things out. Still, I crave for more and more and more. And I’m not talking just about work. I’m talking about everything that I find interesting and loveworthy around me. Despite the pandemic and everything that came with it, there is still so much beauty around us. I see it. I feel it.
When I’m alone I’m thinking about having breakfast with you. You, who I don’t know yet. Dancing and drinking wine in a tub at 2 am. Watching movies. There are things that bloom only when shared. Laughing so hard at your jokes that I fall off the chair. Love so gently it makes me cry. Love so hard it hurts my body and the sweet pain reminds me of you.
But what if no one wants to love so hard? What if everyone is just building walls with pieces of their bruised ego? What to do when pain is no longer sweet, but just a sharp knife across the heart? So poetically, but unbearably painful in real life. Is it really that much easier to just scratch the surface and never fully express our emotions if we all know that this will just bite us in the ass eventually? This is for certain. For sure. People forget there is just one step from the surface to the deep worlds of our being. They forget to explore ‘coz nobody reminds them that it’s not scary. At all. It’s necessary. Become friends with your demons. Have a cup of coffee together, then say thank you and move on. Express your desires. Love yourself. Do it. It’s not easy for everybody, but it is doable. Don’t let your demons, often even dressed as people, pull you this way or that way. You go wherever feels home for you. But to be fully grounded, you must know yourself first.
So, what does it actually mean to love yourself? Self-love is definitely something many of us have not learned at home or in school, but it is something we learned on our own with many ups and downs along the way. There are no words to explain how I love a quote by Jonathan Van Ness from the Fab 5: “You are a rebel if you choose to love yourself. Choosing to love yourself is so against the grain of what we’re taught, honey.” This is gold. Society has been on low vibrations for way too long and people are drained. Commercials telling us how we need to buy more to be happy or how we need a partner to feel loved and have a constant group of people giving us high fives to feel validated. Sure, it’s the best feeling in the world to have a support system around you, but what does it matter if you don’t feel good about yourself first?
Coming from a place of a broken foundation, I would never in a million years thought I would be able to write something like this. To be able to be at such peace and hunger to discover more about myself and to love with every fibre of my heart at the same time. If you think this is just sugar–coating–random– bullshit. Well, it’s not. And if you think love can’t be simple, you are wrong too. It is. You just have to dig deep first.
So.
Start now.
Love yourself.
Dig deep.
Go.
