In Remembrance of Communal Love
A post-Valentine's Day reflection from a single bitch. Yellow Brick Road.
Welcome to Yellow Brick Road, an exploration of the guided path!!
A Homecoming
As the plane touched down in San Diego two weeks ago, the place I was born 22 years ago and haven’t returned back to since the age of 16, gratitude for return washed over me. I started to cry and recognized the feeling of belonging immediately. This is how belonging works, I think. Once you know it, it doesn’t leave you - even if you try to leave it. And even when you find yourself in unfitting places with unfitting characters, you will find yourself back in the sun, reminded of how important it is to stand in the warmth of a long overdue homecoming again.
Coming back to me as we drove to Coronado beach, as I grabbed coffee in North Park, as I circled the very same cul-de-sac where I sat on the neighborhood converter box and had my first kiss, was not an image of a specific place or event. Like getting a whiff of perfume and being transported to the church pew where you sat every Sunday, I smelled San Diego’s air and was in the arm’s of every woman who loved me as a child.
Where distinct memories fail me, I have such an intense attachment to ages 3-6. At this time, my struggling single mother was surrounded by the support of other women. They all raised their kids and each other together. What she could not give, she never stopped me from finding in any matriarch, friend, and nurturer in our lives and I believe this experience to be one of the most fundamental in how I’ve grown in love despite early trauma, old heartbreak, and new self-discovery over the years.
When I imagine motherhood, which I so desire to experience in this lifetime, I envision myself as only one of many sources of support, comfort, and care in my children’s lives. It starts here - our programming to believe only two people can parent and nurture us in childhood and only one person can fulfill those exact same needs in adulthood. Against the incredibly hetero, white, and capitalistic (of which I am none) concepts of how we should nurture ourselves and our future generation, we have a choice to re-imagine love as a diverse system of figures who sustain our life and it’s beauty - as community.
During my trip to San Diego, I went to the San Diego Safari Park. Michelle and I went on a caravan and got up close and personal with some gorgeous animals from all over the world. There, I encountered a species of rhinos from Africa. As we watched a mother rhino lead her daughter around the habitat, our tour guide mentioned something really interesting about this particular species.
Rebecca, our guide, said the female rhinos were not biologically capable of conceiving unless their bodies sensed the presence of other female rhinos. The development of life, in this context, was contingent on communal love. Female rhinos - without the existence of human ego and need to prove worthiness - surrender to their own limitations, to the limitations of one being assuming every role and providing every need to any living being. The continuation of a genetic line could not occur without certainty sustenance and care was carried by many.
Be My Belated Valentine Plz
This is a belated Valentine’s Day post. I couldn’t let the day pass without acknowledgment since this newsletter, my connection with all of you, and my capacity to sit at this desk and spill my heart and scattered ass thoughts on the digital page is all tribute to love’s omnipotence.
All of that blubbering, mushy nonsense to say - I got mad love for ya!
Everyone - single and booed up alike - seems to be in a lingering love hangover since Valentine’s Day. Even though it’s over, it’s kind of…not, ya know? One trend I noticed this year - which could be a reflection of all the chronically single sad bitches and artists I follow - is a recognition of an expanded definition for love beyond the singular connection we can find in partnership. This post tugs at my lil’ heartstrings every damn time:
I love love. I love seeing people in love and I quite enjoy Valentine’s Day regardless of whether or not I have a partner to celebrate it with. As I’ve expanded my definition of love to include devotion to my art, friends, and myself, knowing love as multitudinous feels like old knowledge, of both this life and the last.
My mom used to sneak downstairs early in the morning to leave decorative baskets filled with heart confetti, Reese's hearts among my favorite treats, and notes to remind me just how present love was in my life before school. Then I’d go to school with my bag full of Valentine’s cards with candy attached - one for every student in my class. Everyone was everyone’s Valentine! With the exception of being forced to give our treats to people we may not really like at all, what a perfect reflection of how abundantly love can exist.
It is funny how many folks struggle with singledom on Valentine’s when our first model for the concept was actually platonic. Our class, every person we spent time with, learned with, and grew with. And then I wonder if that’s what all the grief is about. Somewhere we lost the innocence of receiving love as much as possible from our community, and replaced it with chasing love in one form from one person. Since then, I’ve had two Valentine’s Days in my life with partners and they with were astronomically worse than any other day that year, let alone any other Valentine’s Day without a partner at all. Feeling the loss of communal love in replacement of lackluster partnership is not a trade I’m willing to make again.
“Alien to love” is how I would describe my relationship with partnership, which is painfully cliche for an Aquarius Venus and I forgive myself for it!!! I didn’t grow up with any strong examples of partnership framework and I’ve always existed on the margins of desirability. As a fat, queer, Black woman, finding partnership - where systemic violence, scarcity, insecurity, and wounds of lack are often perpetuated - has seldom held a candle to the connections I find in friendship, in my art, in community and collaborative work. Honestly, I feel both happy and miserable in this reality.
On one hand, being without access to desirability my entire life has groomed me to find love (and my ability to receive it) in literally any other place but partnership - to define love as something less challenged by systems and constructs. Namely, with other Black women. A-fucking-men to Black women. And artists. And other lover girls. If I sat in the shame of partnership being objectively hard for people like me, there wouldn’t be much purpose for my little, ironically-romantic heart.
On the other hand, I grieve that time long ago when I sat in class and knew everyone was my valentine because we played together, and learned together, and grew together. On the other hand, I exist in the courage to believe love is not hard for me when I allow room for alternative definitions, and partnership is available even if not necessary or as accessible.
In my opinion, where we find the most delicious fruit to feast on after we’ve sown the seeds of deep, personal work is in our connections. I’m not one to scream at people to love themselves so they’ll never feel longing for partnership again, because that’s delusional. We love ourselves so we can know with absolute certainty love is always available to us. This does not replace the biological, spiritual, and physical desire to be in union with others. We are recipients of our own devotion in the form of strong connection, in the form of art, in the form of friendship.
This Valentine’s Day, I received flowers from my girlfriends. I FaceTimed my people to tell them I love them. I bought myself a treat. I masturbated, as one does.
In the quiet moments between writing and doing whatever a self-employed does on any other Monday, I realized I had returned back to my sense of belonging in love again over the last few years. This year’s love day, I received the sweet treats and sweet notes and acknowledgments of commitment from everyone I learn and play with, returned the same, and sat in the transformative power of community - extension of own’s one devotion to self - as the most essential love in existence.
I’ll leave you with the absolute corniest podcast rec - for the lover girls, gays, and theys: