Come on Baby in Our Dreams, We Can Live Our Misbehavior

I love the way my Mother always makes me feel like a champion. I love Austin. I love having a conversation with my friend that feels like I just finished a 10k race. I love beets (One time I thought I fell in love with one...it's a long story. No drugs or alcohol were involved). I love our Dad/Daughter adventures. I love my Pee-Wee Herman doll even though his voice box is broken and he talks like he's on huffers. I love sourdough bread with butter and strawberry jam. I love my Grandmother's face. I love the way that juice boxes make me feel like a child again. I love L.A. for everything it's not. I love watching people interact with each other. I love desolate urban landscapes. I love lamp.

However, the one thing I've never felt is 100% honest to goodness, heart-wrenching, soul-twisting, poem-inducing, pant-peeing love.

So in honor of having had more of an emotional connection to a beet than a man, I'm declaring this week, "What is Love?" week on my blog. And yes, you have to do the head dance a la Roxbury Guys every time the phrase is written.

On the other hand, don't. It's kind of cheesy.

God, I love that movie (<--See? Another example of something I really love that is not a man.)

Now don't get me wrong, I've felt very strongly for various people before. Sure, I might have confused infatuation with a dude's cowboy boots and nunchucks as love. Or I might have done epic things like get drunk by myself on Venice Beach Boardwalk, call my boyfriend to entice him into one last hurrah before we broke up, pass out amongst the sea of homeless, and never get found by said boyfriend who actually came down to look for me. Yeah, maybe I did confuse one guy's obsession with being the reincarnation of James Joyce, always wearing a three piece wool suit in Southern California, and sticking his thumb in the dirt when he got mad as deep. I might have written my boyfriend's name in tiny pen on my fingernails.

The fact of the matter is, with some objectivity and hindsight, I've never been in love.

As a child of divorce, I would tell you I don't believe in it. In my mind, the only sort of love that exists is that of Elizabeth Taylors'. You have forty ex-husbands and you look fabulous until one day you don't. Then you're super lonely and eventually die child-less, asset-less, and husband-less. All your exes show up at your funeral, sitting next to their significantly younger wives, shaking their heads, saying, "If only she went to psychotherapy sooner."

However, as I've gotten older, I realize there is no glamor in having multiple ex-husbands, careers that perpetually keep you at a distance from people, and glass houses in the hills. You look down at the world below you, never really associating, never really understanding what it's really all about.

Hiding, in order to protect your heart, will only lead to being the Aunt with twenty-five cats named after soap opera characters, bed sores, and Neophobia.

Stayed tuned for tomorrow. The lovely M over at Blackberries to Apples and I will be guest posting on each other's blogs.