Knowing Yourself / A Change Gon' Come

Lately I've been thinking about a couple of relationships in my past. They lasted only a couple of months, and I was sure at the time that what I felt for the other person was love. Yet once I had gotten a small amount of distance from them, it was as if the girl crying Love was someone else. Certainly not me, certainly not with that person. It's a very strange thing—to realize your own emotions can be unreliable. Things moved quickly in both relationships; we talked of the future, lifetimes, years off in the distance, marriage, children. And yet, looking back, I find it impossible to summon those feelings—I have only the slightest remembrance of feeling them.

The person I am now knows that I can be an unreliable narrator of my own life. That the only thing that builds true depth in relationships is time put in, lasting concern. Not the flutter of initial attraction, excitement, or mutual infatuation. That churning one feels in the stomach, the chest—now is nameless. I see it as if meditating: observe the feeling, let it go. Which is not to say that I no longer trust myself, only that I have learned not to call a thing what it isn't. What is real lies beyond the butterflies.

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