A Listen In Love

“Listen to your gut,” I whispered to myself for what felt like the thousandth time. Sitting on the floor in my closet with the door closed, waiting for a moment of clarity to strike and the deep voice of the god I grew up believing in but no longer worship to step in and tell me exactly what to do. I read that answers can be found in meditation. So that’s what I’m doing in my closet, eyes closed, breathing, and between each breath I wonder if the godly voice I seek can be heard in the murmurs of my gut.

I am not brave, for if I were I would have broken the heart of my boyfriend long ago. I don’t believe I love him. I say, “don’t believe” instead of simply “don’t” because I am still not brave. I am afraid of the truth and I believe the truth is that I never loved him. 

Sometimes I stare at him with intensity, trying to will myself into seeing something more. Maybe I love the whiskers that grow on his neck or the dimple in his lower back or the touch of gray coming in above his ears. Maybe I love the way he sings all the time or the way he wears a dish towel over his shoulder when he cooks. Maybe I love that he only wears Nikes and that when he dresses up, he simply wears a black t-shirt instead of a green one. Maybe I love that he knows his job at the house is to empty the dishwasher and his favorite snack is chips and salsa. Maybe I love that he can kind of play guitar. Maybe I love these things.

Or maybe I just enjoy them.

How is one to know what love is when love has yet to present itself? I believe I’ve been in lust and I believe I’ve been in comfort. I believe I’ve crushed hard and I believe I’ve not liked at all, but I don’t believe I’ve been in love.

I don’t believe that’s for lack of wanting. I believe that perhaps I’ve wanted so hard to be in love that I’ve pulled the scarf over my own eyes, blinded myself to the truth and willing walked into the unknown, because I believe that I’ve preferred to hope it’s love than to realize it’s not.

I believe myself to be strong, but my beliefs have been shaken because if I can lie to myself about love for years, then what else can I lie about? My trust in my gut has been broken and what is the purpose of a gut if it can’t be trusted? Could it be this is where I’ve erred? Perhaps it’s never been about trusting my gut. Rather, it’s about listening to it. And in the truest punch to the gut, I don’t believe I’ve listened.

Like a cupboard overflowing with tupperware, I have shoved my guts’ feelings into the cobwebbed darkness only to turn back and watch a warped yogurt tub slide to the ground. Instead of trying to solve the problem, I picked up the tub and threw it to the back of the cupboard and slammed the door shut, dusting off my hands and declaring I’d won. In retrospect, I don’t believe I did. 

A hole in a dike, a crack in a dam. In every manmade disaster, there is a weak point at which the stress is too much and the structure begins to crumble. A hairline fracture that brings the body down. I don’t believe I can pinpoint the moment I finally listened to my gut and knew it wasn’t love, but I know it was small. Small and persistent and angry enough to cause an inner revolution.

The first stage of grief is denial and I believe the first stage of reckoning with the truth is too. “This can’t be happening,” I said to myself, “I can’t possibly be feeling this way,” as I failed for the last time to fit the tub in the cupboard. 

We are taught that we can and should control our feelings. 

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” For years I had this quote by Abraham Lincoln hanging in my room. It could have been a good day or a bad day, I believed I could choose the way I felt about it.

Certainly, to some degree it’s important to remain positive, but now I believe acknowledging the grump of a grumpy day is probably good too. Just like acknowledging the lack of love with a lover.

I wonder then would it not be wise to teach children how to choose a partner? How to differentiate comfort from love, from lust from abuse. My education has not proven helpful in coding and classifying my feelings. I’ve called comfort love and I’ve called lust love, and although my experience with abuse is limited, were I placed in an abusive situation, there’s a chance I’d call that love too.

They say, when you know you know. But what about in the years leading up to the “knowing?” What about all the moments I’ve muttered, “I think I know?” Because I’ve never actually known, I think I thought wrong. 

My anger and sadness have rolled into a single doughball of fear. With years of practice in the art of drowning out my gut, I find it hard to finally listen. It seems there has been a debate taking place between my brain and my gut with my heart as the judge. The theme of the evening: 

“Why should I love him?”

The debate begins with Brain. “He’s kind and it’s comfortable and secure and he’s nice and patient and you live in a great location and your family likes him and he loves you,” Brain spews into the microphone at the podium. 

In the judge’s chair, Heart nods and smiles. “Good answer,” she thinks.

Opposite the stage, Gut stands quietly, patiently waiting for its turn. When it’s time, Gut simply says, “I just don’t feel it.”

Heart looks quizzically at Gut, “Excuse me, Gut, is that all you’ve got?” she asks. Gut nods its head, shrugs its shoulders and says, “Yeah.” 

Meanwhile Brain is delighted. “What a fool Gut has been,” Brain thinks. “Not a single good point. I will most certainly win.”

And time and time again, Brain has won, hailed by Heart as presenting the most logical arguments. 

Until now. 

I believe Gut has lost its shit. Exhausted with the endless fakery and charade from Brain, my gut has had enough. Every doubt and lie and deliberation has resurfaced. The false smiles, the downward cast eyes, the vents to friends, the fear of marriage, the muted praise, the wondering “What if?” The wandering eyes and the sense that something’s not right. All of it has spilled out of the cupboard at once and no amount of shoving will keep it inside.

My heart can’t ignore my gut any longer. The blindfold has been removed and the truth is glaring so bright that I’ve scrambled to try and shield my eyes. But my shield is broken and my heart has turned her attention to my gut, silently apologizing for the years of ignorance, whispering, “I finally get it.” And try as it might, my brain can’t compete with the barrage of feelings being thrown its way. The factual debater is no match for the ethicist and although it feels like an elephant taken down by hyenas, truly unbelievable, it is possible. The pack of dogs, each of whom represent my gut feelings, were starving. So, when the right time and the right place and the right number of dogs and the right elephant presented itself, they unleashed every last drop of their primitive, instinctual and wild glory.

Lauren Melink is television script writer by day and a memoirist by night. Based in Boise, Idaho she spends her time running trails and journaling about the drama of day-to-day life. In 2019 she published a collection of short essays titled "It'll be Fine, Right?"