To qualify for love

Possibly the best way to define 'love' is as the willingness to forego the uncertainty that comes from the knowledge that one can never truly know everything about another person. To intertwine one's own life with that of another, while having faith that the other person, too, will do their utmost to be as honest and forthcoming as they can be, while sharing this life's journey.

This is probably also exactly why it's so hard for those of us who have been taught already as children in the harshest way possible that it's absolutely inconceivable that one would drop one's defences in such an absolute manner. The knowledge and sensations of abuse and the ever-present, lingering threat from Others never truly subsides.

Either it's the feeling of being threatened, or the certainty of being abandoned at some point in the future. You cannot drop your defences. You cannot forget the lessons of the past. You didn't lose your childhood's innocence for nothing, after all. You lost it so that you can be safe now. Isolated. Away from others.


Still, one can imagine the sensation of allowing the other person's hands to touch yours. To have them slide up your arm and touch your face. The feeling of a soft, gentle kiss. Of an embrace and actually feeling everything instead of retreating to that safe spot in one's mind. To experience and feel instead of the eternal numbness. To really trust another person.

Yet to map those feelings onto the human beings around one, their chaotic unpredictability and seeming willingness to hurt others through lack of empathy and communication... all of it conveys a feeling of hopelessness. Why even try, when one is very likely to just get hurt over and over?


As I comfort the sorrows of the traumatised child that still lingers inside of me, I also have to consider the adult me, who is traumatised in their own ways. Not the least of which is the complication presented by having a body that is so unusual. A body that is afflicted with a disease or a disorder, in the eyes of most medical professionals, at least. A body that is healthy, but falls outside of any usual definition of 'human', i.e. being male or female. A body that confronts one with the lies most people tell themselves about 'love'.

True love is platonic at its core. That is, a relationship and mutual understanding based on shared creative and/or intellectual pursuits and interests. Although physical aspects can enhance a relationship, and it's undeniably true that humans are highly focused on physical pleasures, the fact remains that without the platonic aspect, the carnal pleasures that remain are as satisfying as indulging in unhealthy snacks. It'll feel good for a while, but then you get fat, lose your teeth and realise that you have got nothing really to show for said indulgence other than the price you paid.


I don't feel that being bitter about not having found love is a realistic prospect. It's inelegant and feels like self-pity. Two things which I cannot stand. The most important thing to me is still that I can love and care about myself. Me as a person. Also my body. After all, what is it that one entrusts the other person with when you give them your trust and love if one doesn't love oneself first and foremost?

Maybe that's why this struggle of mine with my intersex condition, and the continued inability to give it a place is so important, mostly on account of society pushing me again and again to hate this body of mine, to look at it as a diseased wreck, affected by the horrible disease and disorder called 'hermaphroditism'.

I don't want to hate my body. I want to love this body of mine. It isn't suffering from a disease or a disorder. Yet society insists it does.


I want to love myself. I want to feel loved. I want to love back.


Yet I have no idea if there's a path towards that goal.


Should it be a goal, though?


Is love worth it?


Does one need to love oneself to be happy?


I do not know.


Maya