I woke up today, and I thought I would write about love, and honestly, I sat seven and a half times throughout the day to write about it, but I did not know where to begin, and it all fizzled out. Even now, as I sit here, erasing paragraphs and unkempt sentences, I have only one question: what is it? I am baffled at this heart in me; so forgetful, so naive. I seem to remember the daze, the craze of love like a faint memory from years you did not really live and only glossed over. You know they happened to you, you know time passed, and things were a certain way, but then, on an uneventful morning, you sit and try to remember, but nothing comes to mind. There are years like this in all lives, but that is not how I ever wanted to remember love. I know it has happened to me, but now that I sit here and another year has passed, I do not know what it feels like. I will not go into the depth of my seven and a half attempts today simply because they only reminded me of how little I remember and, which is more, made for terrible writing.
The grey, overcast tarp of the cold sky outside has done nothing to jog my memory. So, I have sat hour after hour and tried to write about it, and hour after hour, I have failed and resumed my duties to be a regular person. There was even some temptation to read an old piece I wrote when I was grieving the last heartache, thinking maybe it would be like an old photograph that reminds me of years I forgot simply because the mind can only remember so much and between the taxes, and the bills, and the stocks, it is almost always going to be the smaller moments, the laughter filled afternoons and the casual evening bicycle rides that get the short end of the stick. I almost read an old piece, thinking it would jog my memory and jump-start my heart, but it felt like cheating.
In the end, at this last half-attempt, I conclude that I do not know what love is anymore, for it has been a long time since I felt it, and all love is different from one another anyway. This is the truth, and this is why I sat seven and half times to write about love on this remarkably typical day, and seven and a half times I failed.