Michigan in Color
8 — Wednesday, February 22, 2023
How to love
Alas, the (socially constructed)
season of love is here. I always ques-
tion what love is and how to practice
it. The conceptualization of love as a
verb, instead of just a noun, is promi-
nent in our everyday language. This
is because love is an all-encompass-
ing concept.
Like many, my first experiences
with love came from family. It was
at home that I learned to differenti-
ate between what love felt like and
what it didn’t. Love felt empower-
ing. Everything not serving my emo-
tional well-being felt disheartening.
Love encompassed unconditional
care, protection and a willingness to
give. My immigrant parents always
cared for me in the way they knew
— no late nights out, no talking to
strangers and no ignoring their calls.
I never questioned their authority
because I understood their love lan-
guage was — to an extent — shaped
by generational trauma. I did, how-
ever, question what love was as I
accessed the mass media, and rela-
tionships with my friends became
more complicated. I recall seeing
my friends and their parents inter-
act like they were their best friends,
sharing secrets and gossiping, and I
wondered why my relationship with
my parents wasn’t like that. Spe-
cifically, I recall when my friends
judged me for having parents that
didn’t let me sleep over. Those expe-
riences forced me to reevaluate what
I knew of love.
Too many times, I wanted to
share my troubling thoughts about
school and friends with my par-
ents. However, the cultural barriers
between my immigrant parents and
me forced me to look for another
source of love and understanding.
I had to acknowledge that their
conceptualization of love was influ-
enced by a different time and place,
foreign to modern American soci-
ety’s standards. My parents showed
me their love, but at times they could
not understand my frustrations
about my friendships or grades.
During those times of uncertainty
and loneliness, I envied those with
siblings. My friends complained
about their siblings, but I never
understood why they wouldn’t want
someone close to their age to talk to.
So — without realizing it — I went on
a quest for other sources of love.
In high school, I learned to love
friends, and I even found romance.
Quickly, I learned that love is not
uniform. The platonic and romantic
relationships I was in taught me that
my loving habits were fundamen-
tally different than others. At times,
the love I poured into relationships
was not reciprocated — convincing
me that I was not worthy of love.
People asked, “Why do you care so
much?” forcing me to question if I
knew how to love.
As children, we are never explic-
itly told what love is. We may have
first encountered love at home with
those who cared for us from birth.
For others, that love may have been
absent. What is often not said is
that the current ways in which we
show and receive love are due to our
learned behavior throughout the
years. Throughout our childhood,
we are exposed to our parents’ hab-
its, either healthy or unhealthy.
Developmental psychology argues
that parental behavior significantly
influences our social, emotional and
cognitive
development.
Because
our parents are the first people we
learn about love from, we are prone
to mirror their habits. Hence, the
million-dollar question of how I love
forces me to consider how my child-
hood impacted my perceptions of
love.
My quest on how to love is con-
tinuous. My experiences in college
have made me reflect on how my
parents showed me love and didn’t.
For example, I never saw physical
touch as a love language until I got to
college. People would casually hug
me, and I felt uneasy. Upon reflec-
tion, I realize that uneasiness stems
from the lack of physical touch from
my parents and other family mem-
bers. I will never resent them for
that as it is always important for me
to acknowledge that they loved me
in the way they knew best. So, as
I reflect on how I show my love to
others, I keep in mind that there are
habits I need to learn and unlearn.
Thankfully, I’ve had the privilege to
develop friendships that revolution-
ized my conceptualization of love.
Joining a multicultural sorority
was an experience I never thought
I needed. As someone who did not
experience the love of a sibling, I was
eager to find out how a sisterhood
would impact me. Since joining,
I’ve found that the bonds I created
with other women were necessary
for my personal nourishment. The
late-night runs to 7-Eleven, the
spontaneous hangouts and talking
in circles. The bonding experiences
were foreign to me, but their empha-
sis on trust and love made my inner
lonesome child feel the warmth. I
was freely able to pour myself into
my sorority sisters, fulfilling the
emptiness I felt in those times when
I needed someone else to love. They
taught me how to be a woman who
is able to receive and give love. Their
affirmations when I felt at my lowest
reminded me that my love language
should never be seen as “needy” or
“too much.” Throughout my time
in the sisterhood, I’ve learned two
lessons about love: (1) the love you
give to yourself is just as important
as the love you give to others, and (2)
unconditional love requires a com-
mitment to constructive struggle
and transformation.
Everyday encounters with my
friends and others remind me of
the continued struggle to learn how
to love. As I continue to question
love languages, it is vital for me to
commit to an ongoing process of
transformation. We can never stop
learning how to love because we
encounter different experiences and
people every day. Love languages
differ, but the commitment to show
love should never be up to question.
We are growing to be cynical about
love. A lot of people believe that
love does not exist, but if you look
closer at the way you interact with
the world, you will notice that love
is everywhere. Love is in how you
choose to show up for yourself and
in school. Love is in the warm smiles
you get from your friends every day.
Love is everywhere, and we must be
willing to learn how to love.
LUZ MAYANCELA
MiC Columnist
Luz Mayancela/MiC
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Why I slept at 3
Reminders
To the Ocean,
My deepest apologies for
judging, you didn’t
lash out at
those helpless sailors,
you were writhing.
a tide of cool
blue currents washes down
my spine, as
fingers dance a
mindless waltz through
my hair.
A transmitter relaying,
across seas of hopeful stars,
the universe’s message
loud and clear.
But maybe I adjusted the frequency,
and never felt that punch
without a swing,
feeling it bore through
my chest, seeking out my soul.
The soul It once protected, It:
the statue I used to
stare at from the banister, wondering
why Periamma had chosen it to
guard her front door,
a laughing Buddha
buoyantly chiseled, warmth
emanating from his smile.
But broken out
from the stone pedestal,
It unfurls into a tower, casting
shadows over town and mountain
alike
lunging forward to fill its maw, gorg-
ing
on my innards, a feast of
my flesh and bones,
teeth gnashing, eyes
a lustful green
weighing down the scale
weighing me down to the floor
Which I slip through,
into midnight streets
all that existed
was you and me
our laughs
warmed the air
floating on frostbitten breeze
that carried us in
to the computer lab,
watching shows on the board
as I battled against the pain
emanating from my sleeping legs,
afraid it would disturb
the warm gold vines that
slowly encircled us,
And when Joyce
walked in
to clean
on her graveyard shift,
that never prevented her from
sitting with me for
sitting with me for
a few minutes,
we jump apart,
bashfully innocent,
cheeks ablaze.
Cycles
When the wildflower
peaks out its head,
icy memories shudder,
and melt in
flames of Spring again.
Yet winter comes,
and the only heat
is from staring
into the hearth,
and the comforter on my bed.
It’s no easy feat,
walking through the snow,
while the ghost of the sun
lingers in my chest—
So I convince my mind
Spring will never come.
Yet when I least expect it,
I see a blossom.
And my well-trodden road
is worn once more
oblivious the tempest
will soon rage
I avoid the chill
in the solace of my bed,
insulated by the
heat of another.
Nonetheless,
I ask myself,
Why am I dreaming
of the Wildflower?
KUVIN SATYADEV
MiC Columnist
Premarital eye contact and
its consequences
My friend told me a few days
ago that I look like someone who
has never been in love. I stared
at the straight line of her mouth
and blinked because that was all I
could do. She said it with the same
tone she would use to tell me that I
have two eyes and two lips and two
nostrils. The facts of my life and my
love are obvious to her, somehow,
and as unsettled as I was by this,
I knew that she had never been in
love either. That truth was written
somewhere in the space between
her eyebrows, in the greenish
veins underneath the thin skin of
her face. My friend is a pale green,
the color of a matcha latte with too
much milk and sugar that tastes
good anyway, which may be why
she is my friend. My green is darker.
Both of us are crisp and young, our
inexperience fresh like kale and let-
tuce.
In the Hallmark movies my
mother watches, love finds protag-
onists easily and predictably. The
few sharp edges around a relation-
ship are cured by a kiss in swirling
styrofoam snow. For me, love is
“Christmas in July.” It is performa-
tive, unreal, intangible. It exists on
a screen, carefully constructed for
two straight Midwestern WASPs
who only wear ugly flannel and
boots that never seem broken in. It
will never be real for me.
In the old Bollywood movies I
watch with my mother, people also
fall in love simply. All they have to
do is lock eyes before they decide
they will die for each other. Their
love is incongruous with what I
grew up seeing in my Indian com-
munity, marred by arranged mar-
riages and domestic strife. My
mother spends hours on the phone
talking to women her age, all com-
plaining about their husbands.
Some of them have husbands that
beat them and others have hus-
bands that beat their kids and most
of them have husbands that never
put dirty plates in the sink. Having
a husband is hell but they all ask
when my eldest sister will get mar-
ried so that she can suffer too. None
of us know what a marriage is sup-
posed to look like.
I don’t know what eros looks like,
either, not in real life. My friends
describe their partners and roman-
tic encounters to me and I feel like
I’m watching mating rituals in an
aquarium. Bathed in blue light,
I watch as they dance and cling
to each other, my own face mir-
rored on the glass and disrupting
my view. There is tenderness and
care in their dance but also a sort of
desperation. They’ll die if they stop
dancing. Anything, even something
awful, is better than loneliness. In
her essay Bluets, Maggie Nelson
writes, “Loneliness is solitude with
a problem.” Everyone in this aquar-
ium is lonely, crushed by hundreds
of meters of water above us.
The worst loneliness I’ve ever
experienced was on the third floor
of East Quad, sequestered in a dorm
room during the winter semester of
2021. We had not yet gotten vac-
cinated. The Diag was gray and
empty and my cheeks were always
cold. During the daytime, I slept
on the bed reserved for napping,
and when I couldn’t sleep, I stared
at the ceiling with dry eyes. I went
days without speaking to anyone.
That time did something irrevo-
cable to me, something I to this day
can’t explain. It feels as if someone
peeled back layers of my skin and
stitched a hermit into me.
Another friend — this one is
electric blue — had a recent and
brief obsession with online tarot
readings. We picked cards that
told us our fortune on her screen,
the unrelenting fluorescent lights
of the CCCB basement blurring
moments into hours. Most of the
quizzes involved picking six cards,
and I always somehow ended up
getting the hermit, a gray guy that
looks like Gandalf. My electric blue
friend always picked the magician,
the talented face of Gandalf. The
internet algorithms might have
been looking at the lines in our faces
through her laptop camera, under-
standing the truths that are written
there. The online tarot told me that
my current circumstances barred
me from finding love. Not now, it
seemed to say, not ever. Afterward,
I opened Co-Star, which tells me
that I’m having trouble with “love,”
a fun fact that it tells me every day.
I’ve known my electric blue
friend since middle school and
we’ve oscillated between best
friends and acquaintances ever
since, depending on our sched-
ules. She can take one look at me
and know when I’m too tired to
function, even though my eye bags
always look the same. When I look
at her, I think of the 12-year-old
that used to help me with my pre-
algebra homework. In college, she
told me about sleeping with the boy
that she loves, and my head started
buzzing as if she had just poured
Pop Rocks in my ears. We are chil-
dren, I thought through the crack-
le. We are barely 13.
When I was 6, I thought I would
fall in love for the first time in high
school. All I did was develop crush-
es on ugly libertarians.
I know that it isn’t love that I
want, but attention. I confessed to
being a narcissist to my friend over
the phone recently. “I just want
someone to tie my shoelaces,” I
said, because I had just seen a show
where the man gets on his knees
to tie his girlfriend’s shoes. He ties
them and remains like that — at her
feet, on his knees, head bowed —
for a few seconds, crying because
they are breaking up. It’s all very
romantic and sad and blue-black.
He notices her shoelaces even as
he is leaving her. His attention to
detail is unmatched because he is
not a real person. He never will be.
The friend on the other line is a
smooth slate gray in an unnerving
and calming way. Last semester, we
created a character named Mack
and tried to convince our other
friends he was real. Mack was Irish
Catholic and had a poster of Jesus
on the ceiling above his bed. He
carried around a pocket Bible with
sticky pages and whitish stains. He
didn’t have an Instagram associat-
ed with his name because he want-
ed to seem unplugged and sexy, and
girls fell for it. Our friends believed
Mack was real. Mack was Franken-
stein’s monster, a collection of the
worst traits we could think of in
men stitched together into a single
idiotic form. We loved Mack as all
mothers love their awful, evil sons.
Time is moving so fast that I feel
as though Mack was born years
ago, even though my slate-gray
friend and I birthed him in Octo-
ber, when I was just freshly 20. My
body is aging faster than my mind,
which is still sluggish like a child’s.
I accidentally laughed at a couple
cupping each other’s faces in the
Fishbowl recently. They were grab-
bing each other like one of them
was about to go off to war. Their
passion seemed ridiculous at the
time, but maybe it is revolutionary
to love in a sea of monitors and stu-
dent depression.
I’ve thought about love more in
the past few months than I have in
my entire life. Maybe it’s because
of Valentine’s Day or maybe it’s
because I’m getting older and my
mom is telling me to join Muslim
Students Association to find a part-
ner or maybe it’s because I’m listen-
ing to too many love songs titled
“Love Song.” Maybe it’s because
all my classes surround love and
divinity and conjugation; authors
say that this is what gives life. This
is far removed from my studies of
science, where life boils down to
four simple letters of A, T, C and G,
where life-conferring elements are
not a lover’s breath but carbon and
oxygen.
In the lab where I work, we are
trying to grow bacteria to kill and
see how much virus it takes to
make them die. The liquid bacterial
culture is supposed to be a pale tur-
bid green, close to the color of my
friend who is a matcha latte. They
don’t grow well unless they’re on
a shaking plate, rocked like a baby
in its mother’s arms. Those micro-
organisms are from the ocean and
accustomed to the currents of the
waves. They will grow asexually
until we infect them and pray that
they die. But that isn’t to say there’s
no point.
When I get home every night, I
wrap my arms around my honey-
pink roommate. For five seconds,
she squeezes me back. She knows
how important that temporary
pressure on my ribs is for my soul.
When I go to bed, I’ll dream about
marrying someone I made eye con-
tact with weeks ago and wake up in
cold sweats. Eros is illusory, night-
marish, sinful. I won’t be able to go
back to sleep, the red light of the
rising sun already peeking through
my blinds.
SAFURA SYED
MiC Managing Editor
Rita Sayegh/MiC
Safura Syed/MiC