On trying to find God in love
Why am I addicted to romance?
“I dream too much and I don't write enough,
and I’m trying to find God everywhere.”
- For Those Who Can Still Ride in an Airplane for the First Time, Anis Mojgani
“I don’t buy the deities spoke of
But in love, there’s something to hold
And I get a little bit closer to it”
- Little Bit Closer, Sam Fender
Sharp shards of broken glass on a kitchen floor. A messy amalgamation of memories from a childhood half lived, half forgotten. A sickly sweet ice cream, a kiss on the cheek. A desire to be loved, and loved, and loved.
It’s all I’ve ever wanted, for as long as I can remember. Someone to hold, someone to love me. Me and Prince Charming riding off into the sunset, him saving the girl stuck on the second floor in a web of her own misery and a brain never fully functioning. I’ve often romanticised my suffering. As a writer, how can I not? It’s when the words flow the most freely out of me, when I’m cleaning up self-inflicted wounds, taking breaks between applying the bandages to write a paragraph or two.
I don’t know why I’m addicted to romance. Is it societal conditioning, is it something from my childhood, is it my self-esteem that God knows I can’t, no matter how hard I try, fix on my own? Or is it just simply the way that I am? I’m not too sure, and I don’t know if I ever will.
I think, sometimes, it’s because when I’m in love—or the thing most resembling love that I have ever felt—it’s when I’ve felt the closest to “God”. Or any religion, I suppose. And I’m not a religious person, not really. It’s indescribable, I suppose, isn’t it? It’s like we all try as hard as we can to put it into words, but none of us have really gotten to that sweet spot.
It’s the reason we all keep living and keep going. It’s what keeps us up at night, or causes us to sleep in until 4pm on a random Tuesday. It’s what can make us cry into our mother’s arms like a child what but makes us so full of light when we are in it. It’s almost extraterrestrial, the way that it can make you feel as though you are floating above everybody else; experiencing an entirely different existence. It's the point. It’s the whole point.
It’s the highs and lows of faith; of feeling and believing something with your whole heart until you’re suddenly catapulted into questioning it’s very existence. It’s seeing divorce rates and messy break-ups and the one who got away and it’s thinking, do people really feel as happy as they say they do?
It’s meeting someone and being hit with a feeling of “this is it”, only for it to be ripped away a few weeks later. It’s trying and failing so many times at trying to understand someone and for them to understand you because you love them but sometimes, love just isn’t enough. It’s cold coffee on bedside tables mid-argument. Holding hands in busy restaurants and speaking with your eyes. It’s forgiveness and friendship and everything in between.
It’s hitting the half-way point between 25 and 26 and deciding that it might be time to lower your standards, to accept that not everybody is going to feel in the same all-consuming way you do. It’s wanting to banish the all-consuming feelings from your brain and be mellowed out so that you don’t find it all so exhausting. But then coming back to yourself and remembering, if the books and the movies and the songs have been written, surely it exists? It’s already there, somewhere, waiting for me to discover it when it’s the right time? Love, I mean—not God. I’m still not so sure about that one.
I’ve always believed in magic and fairytales and faith. I believe in miracles and second chances and coming back to yourself again and again and again. I think maybe “God”, whatever we want to call it, isn’t some deity in the sky; coated in clouds and studying us. Maybe God is love. That’s why it can feel like, sometimes, the existence of yourself and your place within the world truly depends on it.
I don’t want to delve too deep into religion or anything here but, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about recently. Sending you all so much love and light on this sunny Friday evening.
All my love, Char x
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Great artical this is so guinet and relatable