What is my state of affairs? I have never been in love. I might have come close to what others might define as love but I wouldn't define it in that way. Even at that degree I was at an extreme, an extreme that I could not allow myself to cross. I have contemplated the several what-ifs regarding that moment here and I've stated them as though they happened but my thoughts here betray me today. Not that I am in the mood of denying them or that I can deny them, my understanding of them has become deeper. What I have described in these pages is a deep, affectionate friendship - a friendship that I have never experienced and doubt if I will ever experience.
But as I try to remember the actual time, I can recall moments of significant uncertainty. Maybe because I didn't know what it was and I wasn't sure of what to expect and how or how much. Most probably that is the reason for all sorts of anxiety, uncertainty and insecurity associated with that situation. But after recognizing through several years of understanding what it was I can safely state that the relationship was nowhere close to be called love.
I am not a creature of love or for love. The word irritates me. I find it bogus. There is care and love is merely a synonym and nothing more. Others tend to add things to the word love but they could just as well add it to care. And care I choose because it comes forward without any illusions or mysterious connotations. It is bare and simple, a proper fact. A fact of life. Illusions belong to the mind. And so I do not try to re-define love, I maintain the worldly descriptions of it and I take it as that before I distill it to its essence - care.
Care for me is still different from love, as it is for the world but in terms of value I believe that care ought to be valued incredibly more than love for love thought meaningful in the world is entirely bogus in reality.
And what I experienced was a sense of care. Care isn't stronger than love, it doesn't even make a movement in the same direction as love for it is entirely distinct from it - in the same way that one might consider God the essence of Man but God and Man can't be said to be the same thing. In fact, God and Man are as distinct as two things can be. However, their intimate relationship is the basis for some people's world. Similarly, care is distinct from expression of love even though it remains the essence of love. Love is built upon care so much that love is fictionalized and detached from reality. Care remains, at all times, grounded.