Reservations of Familiar Love

I was serving these customers once. An old married couple and the husband’s brother. They were visiting from the states, they were dressed like they're always prepared for an afternoon by the lake. You could tell they spent lots of time together, all three of them. They wore their grievances with each other like a broken record player wears its melodies. The husband was this hardboiled yet kind patriot of a man, he tried very hard not to be inconsiderate of my Arabness. It’s the trying that made it awkward, like there was some distance between our skin colors he had to bridge. Anyways, I didn't really mind, it was kind of cute coming from an old man. You could tell his wife was the soothing waters to his fire, she translated his sternness with her kindness like it was a dance they've shared many times. She reminded him to tip, asked me questions about my day, she had a bright and gentle smile. The brother, at least in this life-long brotherly dynamic, felt like the runt of the pack. Like his brothers wife had to defend his soft and gentle heart from his brothers remarks on the regular. Their conversations, although new, rang the tune of a practiced dance, their coexistence and their adaptation to each others personalities, vulnerabilities, became routine. The gentler brother even went to the bathroom when I brought out the check, like clockwork from the look of his older brother scoffing reflexively, like some things never change. Now outside this little bubble of familiar love, those individuals could very well express themselves in drastically different ways, but together, they were brought back to a role they've habitually taken on, like going quiet around my cousins out of a reversal in my psychological clock. Putting on the face they remember and loved me in, despite their love remaining irrespective of how I show up in our relationship. There was this wonderful sense of a shared history, shared moments of joy, inside jokes, and even grievances that would lose all sting if taken out of this exact dynamic. Words that only take on meaning when spoken from the lips of a loved one. These circles of shared time we keep our hearts alive and in company in, circles that also ask us to relieve lots of static phases of our selfhood. 

I find it much easier to be all that I am around strangers, funny, talkative, outgoing. Around family or people I really care for, I have this weird habit of being reserved. I quiet up, take more care in our interactions, my sense of self is muted. Maybe because with my people, my heart is on the line, my love for them makes me vulnerable to their care and their harm. In the 1400s in Medieval Europe, infant mortality was so high that adults who have survived and can afford to, made it a cultural trope not to develop relations with their children. Kinda fucked huh, a whole generation of neglected and unloved children. Point is, love can be a terrifying thing, it takes root in your heart and once it’s in there, it's almost impossible to get it out without tearing piece of your heart out with it. If a stranger insulted me it wouldn’t phase me, if my mom doubted the quality of my heart, whole different game. If a stranger died, I’d feel for them, if my loved one were to die, I’m going to carry their memory, the time we shared, and the pain of their absence for the rest of my life. Love can be a terrifying thing, but without it, life would be meaningless. I’d rather feel the discomfort of a love that overwhelms me over the abject meaninglessness of an existence void of any feeling at all. As my homie Swagdon once said “feel everything, or nothing at all.” In any case, pushing someone we love away is not going to make their death, departure or abandonment any easier on us.

Life is meant to obliterate us, our hearts are meant to sit in the flames and burn till nothing is left but its most basic loving essence. A spiritually mature heart embraces suffering as part of the pyres of this Dunya. The heart remains open, because it’s expected to break, again and again, for the love we choose again and again, despite the painful mess it leaves behind. Our hearts are meant to break themselves open.