Love is in the Air

My friend M. went on a date with my frientance A.S. (a frientance is someone closer than an acquaintance but not quite a friend; a fracquaintance is someone who's slightly more than an acquaintance, but not a friend: the order is "acquaintance, fracquaintance, frientance, friend"). My friend A. is flirting with a girl he likes.  My friend A.L. has a new boyfriend, J.  My friend I. has started seeing someone.  My cleaner has a new man, and she's head over heels.

It's delightful to behold all this.  It's always delightful, for me, to see people falling in love, or enjoying attraction and/or romantic feelings.  All the charm, the bashful pleasure, the happiness... Love is always wonderful, and it's good to have it in the world.  There ought to be more of it.  And because I like my friends, it's even better for me that this love in the world is theirs.

But there's another person inside me, stepped aside from that person, and that separate me would like her own love - just a little bit of it.  

It's funny.  When you tell people that you wish you were in love, or that you wish for a partner, they always seem to assume that there's something wrong:  that you don't have a rich life, or that you're unhappy and looking for someone to make you happy, or that you don't have enough belief in yourself, or liking for yourself, to manage without someone else there to buoy you up. It never occurs to people that you might want someone because your life is full and interesting, and you want someone to share that fullness and those interests with; or that you want someone because you're happy, and you want to share that happiness with someone, or give it to them; or that you want someone because you get pleasure from making someone happy, and you want to do that.  

M. said, "Everyone gets their five minutes," and I believe they do.  But sometimes I feel like that Divine Comedy lyric:  "I know the best is yet to come,/But does it always take this long?"

That's all; that's all; that's all.

You'll want your joke, I expect:

A man walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, "Doctor, I don't know what's wrong with me:  sometimes I think I'm a tee-pee, and sometimes I think I'm a wigwam."  And the doctor says, "Oh, that's easy!  You're too tense."