(About a 2 minute read)
I’ve got a promiscuous heart. It’s a nymphomaniac. It can’t stop itself from falling for people. Long ago, I tried long and hard to love “an only one”. The heart didn’t like that at all. It went on strike after about two years. It began making me die inside.
It’s a loyal heart. Once it decides to love you, it sticks with you no matter what you do just like a bad family name in a small town. It never falters in it’s love for more than the few minutes it takes you to forget one of my lectures on the epistemology of carnal knowledge. If you abuse me, it will still love you. It will only regret that now I myself have got to leave you. It’s as promiscuous as a cruise ship full of cats, but it’s as loyal as a kennel full of dogs.
But it’s picky too. Paradoxically, while it can’t just limit itself to an only one, it can be really picky about the dozen or so people it loves all at the same time. Sometimes it won’t even love people I like, esteem, and admire. People I would proudly be the first to pick as a roommate on a lonely two year rocket ride to Mars. Sometimes I think my heart is the pickiest heart I’ve heard tell of apart from hearts too scared, too confused, or too stuck up to love anyone at all.
I’ve tried — years ago I tried — to turn my heart into a nice, weedless, walled garden. It just came back to me with an ultimatum, “Leave me wild or die”.