As Heavy As Gravity

Are intelligence and love

incompatible?

I wonder because I can

rationalize, intellectualize,

and reason all about the theory

of love; but I don’t seem to know

what it is.

It bothers me, because I’ve broken

hearts, and I feel the guilt; an

obligation of guilt, for the destruction

I have wrought to those few hearts

that dared to love me.

I’ve felt the pain of losing love, of

watching it wither like fruit on the vine,

in the droughts of my affection.

I still can’t seem to know anything

about it though.

I understand human pair bonding,

I understand the brain chemistry,

I understand the social import,

I understand it in the most intellectual way,

but I don’t really know anything.

I believe that I want to be loved,

and that I want to give my love back,

but I’m not sure what that even means,

I don’t emotionally understand how to even begin to

be loved and reciprocate it.

I have a generalized sense of compassion for

people, I am brimming with understanding for

the complex emotional states people find themselves in,

I get that people desire connections,

but I don’t know what it means.

I’m coldly rational about love and I have

a hard time believing in it. Is love a myth?

Is love the story we tell ourselves when we choose

a mate in order to justify our breeding and

evolutionary desire to protect our tribe?

Is love real? Is love made? Is love the word I

use so I don’t have to explain myself further?

Is love an excuse for nature?

Is romantic love even attainable when embroiled

in the vacuum of rationalizing it?

I feel bad when I break a heart, but know

that it’s just an organ designed to pump

blood as part of an ingenious circulatory

system, but I still feel like I’ve damaged

it.

Is romantic love even a knowable thing?

Is it easier for some people than it is for me?

I can’t wrap my head around it and I think it’s

making me mad.  It’s battering me and

humiliating me.

Or am I humiliating myself in this ceaseless

quest for explanation about something so

unique and specific for millions of people and

through centuries of life?  Can I be smart enough

to love?

Or do I have to stop thinking and pretend to start

feeling and hope that if I fake it, I’ll make it?

It seems disingenuous, but do the ends justify

the means? Does anyone really know?

Or does love just happen, like gravity.

At least I sort of understand gravity.