License to Love . . .

What would you say if I told you that I’ve been married three times? What would you say if I told you that the longest of those marriages was . . . two years? In my head it was more like a year because the last of those are a complete blur. What would you say if I told you that I’ve never actually been in love? You’d probably be severely confused—especially since I have been a wife. Well, let me assure you; I’ve never been in love. I’ve been in deep like, maybe even lust . . . but not love. I think a large part of me believes that I don’t deserve love. The time I came the closest was with someone who had years of baggage and so purposely made himself difficult to love. Thus, causing me to feel that I didn’t know how to love. Felt stripped of my ability to love and to be loved. It was unhealthy. I had feelings of inadequacy before that situation; but, where it all began, I have no idea. I’m hoping by the end of this testimonial, I’ll be closer to figuring it out.

Unrealistic, right? I agree. It’s been a pattern for most of my life; a short essay won’t be the instant cure…

You see, I write romance. Let me repeat that . . . I. Write. Romance. Have you marinated in that yet? Well, I need you to because people seem to like the illusions that I paint. For a while I even felt as though I pulled the illusion of romance off because there was a part of me that entered a fantasy world when I wrote for these women. But guess what? With each of my stories . . . each of my stories, I had to consciously add “I love you” in places. That’s odd to me, and I didn’t even realize it until I submitted to write the article that you’re reading. I didn’t realize that Perri is a romance author who is a romantic at heart, who has these dreams of being romanced, but doesn’t know how to be in love. That Perri, is more in love with the notion of being in love because Perri doesn’t know that she’s even loveable. I mean, if I were, wouldn’t that have happened? Wouldn’t I have had relationships that stood the test of time? Wouldn’t I have cared more about myself than to take a trip to San Quentin to marry my first husband? Yes, I’m nodding as I type this. I absolutely did do that. I was at the height of a promising corporate career with a major telecommunications company. I’d just given birth to my only child and he wasn’t with the father.

San Quentin (I’ll refer to him by that for the purpose of this post) was everything I’d asked for in a man, but he was also some things that I forgot to exclude when asking for him: a felon, a drug user, and non-existent ambition. That was the first of many tragedies. I couldn’t believe it. He treated me like a queen, he loved my son as his own, and he was a family man. But he had demons and the demons were stronger than anything that we could’ve built, so I had to walk away from that. But just like the two after him, I stayed moments too long because I was firmly placed in nurturer mode. It was a place that I hadn’t chosen for myself, but that had actually been chosen for me—from childhood. I was made into a “mother” figure at a young age. And on top of that, I also had to kind of watch out for my mother after having seen her go through so much while she was in survival mode raising three kids by herself—as head of her own household.

I saw a lot. I heard a lot. I felt a lot.

Having to pretty much supervise three lives as a child, nurturing was what I grew up to know. That way of living that I adopted as my permanent armor had followed me into adulthood like an unwanted spirit. There was no shaking it. So, I chose the men who chose me. I chose the men who showed a healthy amount of interest in me and mistook that for love. As a result, I was able to convince myself that I loved them right back. It’s been a tumultuous ride, to say the least and frankly, I want off.

The ride is no fun. There’s no high associated with it; but plenty of lows. I have often asked God why he keeps delivering folks into my realm who need me. I ask Him when he’s going to bring me somebody that I need? It just seems unfair that the prayer has yet to be answered. But, I just figure that I’m still being prepared for that person, and that somewhere that person is in their own lab being prepared for me, as well.

So, it goes to my point about when I write. I ran toward writing with every bit of strength I had. It was a lifelong dream of mine, and once I started I couldn’t stop. But what came as my personal struggle during the writing process was turning these characters into individuals who couldn’t live without each other. They’re people who meet, fall in love and have these huge moments of profound adoration and long-lasting love. They’re not me. With each story that I’ve written, I’ve literally only realized during my own editing phase that the, “I love you’s,” are missing. There’s been plenty of sex and caressing and kissing and all that good stuff. But I have to go back and put the words in their mouths. I can’t figure out how that little—BIG something goes MIA from my process while I’m having these people fall unapologetically, and quite forcefully, into their feelings for one another.

But in my own past, I’ve entered loveless situations that just happened to, at some point, appeal to my emotions. At some point, and later down the line. I’ve given myself freely without many expectations, and then I walk away pissed that they haven’t given me what I needed to survive in that relationship. My characters are who I want to be. The strong, fierce, successful woman who knows how to make her choices work for her. Women who know how to not settle for less—who refuse to settle for less. Women who know their worth.

Is she buried deep inside me kicking and screaming waiting for me to hear her, and cursing me for not? Is she only going to reside inside of these women characters that I bring to life, but not in my own physical life? That would be tragic because at my core, I know that I want love. I want that kind of everlasting love that’s unconditional. I want for a man to want me and no other. I want that professing kind of love where he stops people in their tracks because of how brightly his love shines for me. But do I know how to give that back? Or have I been so settled in where I am that I’ll continue to make the same choices, even to the point of f*cking up any opportunity for the right choice? If I can’t even remember to have fictional characters profess their love to one another on paper, in a book . . . how in the hell am I going to bring it to life—in real life?

Like so many of us who walk this earth, our hurts, our logical reasoning for anything in life, and our reactions to people/places/things, most often derive from a place that we’ve long grown from but haven’t forgotten. We’ve grown from it because time told us we had to. But those feelings are suppressed until something triggers them. I’ve already had two powerful triggers at varying times—one was in 2013 when I started to write professionally. The other was a week ago when I typed the first paragraph for this narrative.

Wow.