Coldplay

"Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to

Fix you"

Lyrics to Coldplay's "Fix You"

Listening to Quincy argue with his girlfriend makes me ask: how much of a relationship is spent fixing?

I am not your father, so I do not want to father you. I am not your therapist, so I do not want to counsel you. I am not your minister, your instructor, or your mentor; I am not your wealth of knowledge, your reference, your expert, your lifeline or your savior. I am not your god, so I will not show you. I am your lover, and I will love you.

I want to be loved as I am, as an object of imperfection. Not tolerated - loved. This is important. I don't want my quirks to be ok. I want them to be necessary. I want my flaws to be desirable. And I want your flaws, your quirks, to be loved, not tolerated.

How can anyone, myself included, expect happiness if a relationship is based on the expectation of another to change? I don't want to fall in love with an ideal, I want to fall in love with YOU. I don't want to sit on the phone and tell you things that you need to do. I don't to perform for you. I don't want to keep a delusion of you and fall in love with that.

The danger with this is that it makes it awfully difficult to give everything to a person. If I am unwilling to settle on loving an ideal, that means I need to be willing to cut off feelings that develop for what appears to be a person, but is an ideal. It's easy to fall in love, at least for me. It's even easier to fall in love with someone when I don't see them, but I see what they and I want to see. Gah, it's SO easy. Then I'm faced with the sudden downfall, the realization of who they really are, not because they were hiding it, but because I didn't want to ruin my ideal. Now I've fallen in love, committed, and I get to rediscover whether it's the person or the idea that I love.

How do you love a person, not an idea? I have all these misconceptions that cloud my view. I have expectations, desires, and holes that I want you to fill, but in the process of seeking the puzzle piece, I often forget the shape. How do I know you? Can I possibly expect to know you? You are always...

I watch my hands as you tell me who you are. I feel my head nod in approval when you say something I love, and I feel my hands twitch when you say something I don't. I feel the impulse to fix creep up in my throat, to disagree, to tell you what you want, to tell you who you are, and who you should be. I feel it and I treasure it because I can feel it, it's right there, can you see it? I want to do it, I want to make you someone else, I want to make you into what I want, but that's not what you are, you are something else entirely and it's beautiful and it's perfect and it's exactly how it should be, not any other way. I restrain myself, and bite back the nausea that drips like a mouthful of ice water down my esophagus when I get afraid that you might be wrong for me, and I adore you more.

I feel dangerous and invasive as I learn who you are at your most personal level and terrified of who it is.

It is terrifying, knowing somebody. To see them not as a piece that can fit your life, but as an entirely different puzzle. I am trying to learn how to stop looking for the piece that fits my hole, and to start admiring the beauty of the other, separate, incomplete puzzle in front of me. I am trying to learn how to view other people in relation to themselves, not to myself.

It is terrifying, knowing somebody. To release all illusion of control over another's behavior is terrifying. To come to the realization of my powerlessness to change her into what my trivial mind deems as better is terrifying. To realize what my trivial mind deems as better is terrifying. To realize that my impulse is to change her is terrifying. To realize I am terrified is exhilarating.

I don't know what it is about it, but seeing someone's soul scares me shitless. I think it scares most people. I see the face of a god I've never known, the face of perfection, not in flawlessness, but in nature. Your downfalls, the things that are so wrong for me, are perfect. Perfect in the sense that they require no change.

So fuck off, Coldplay. I shall fix nobody; I only shall cower in the corner, feeling pressure of my heart in my stomach as I glimpse into the infinite.

~wes~