On thinking about love (together); when old age comes.

By Pedro Mieles Cantos

An attempt at a hybrid essay on the subject of love.

Thank you so much, Valeria.

It’s cold tonight. It looks like it’s going to rain for the rest of the night, and as I hear the raindrops hitting the metal handrails, I hear Valeria’s voice over the phone. She says it’s not worth being with someone if they can’t break free from the modern notion that everything is fleeting. She also says that if you (as a person) choose a partner, you also have to believe that anything is possible, if both of you are willing to make it so. Her eyes watch me. Her lips move. Every word she speaks seems driven by a conviction toward simplicity. Toward truth. Toward the irrefutably concrete reality of what is. She reminisces, talking about her past relationships, about her parents; she also remembers how much they loved each other, in the way that Don Miguel, her father (as imperfect as he was), gave the little he had, just to see Doña Melba, her mother, smile.

The rain is falling. It feels like everything is about to come crashing down. We both hear the sound of thunder more than twenty thousand kilometers away. Because in Guayaquil, too, it hasn’t stopped raining all day. A downpour. Valeria tells me about the times she found herself in somewhat melancholic situations. From her last relationship before ours, to other completely confidential matters that are best left untouched for now. She says that no matter how much one person loves another, they can’t save them. It becomes disastrous, somewhat merciless. We are here to love, not to save. And yet, it all sounds so contradictory. It happens , I tell her, that the more we love someone, the more we tend to lose ourselves. Not implying that all love is bad, but that all love that isn’t true leads to self-sacrifice. Forgetting ourselves and putting that person on a pedestal, as if they could command us. We stop being. We stop knowing who or what we’re becoming. Valeria just listens. It’s as if a whole lifetime is playing out in her head. There are people who don’t see the distance of time, she says slowly. Nor do they see the physical distance, I tell her. Nor do they see that some couples are privileged not to be so far apart, she says. And yet they still hurt each other. They could talk all day, see each other at night, go out to dinner on the weekends. And then, boom. You’re no longer interested in that person. Nor do you want to see them again. Rather, you’ve already found someone else. Love isn’t unfair. People are unfair. It’s fear, she tells me, a little annoyed. The fear of not being able to, or wanting to, be alone. 

I think about what Marcelo told me a few days ago, when he was helping me move: It’s not that I can’t be with someone else. It’s that I don’t want to be with someone else. I can love Ashley, and I can be with her every night, and we can talk about anything. And there won’t be any secrets. No matter how attractive, rich, or outgoing someone else might be, they won’t have any effect on you; they’ll go unnoticed, as if they’d never been there. Because your body and mind are with your partner. I’m not saying I believe I’ll be with her forever. But right now, these days and these months. This child, who is my son, makes me love her and love them. Everything changes when a family is born. It’s no longer a love between two. Now there are three. And your heart grows a little bigger. 

I tell Valeria all of this as I recall it; she nods her head and looks at me. “Yes, that’s true, ” she says . Maybe it’s greed, I tell her. This desire to hoard enough to look down on everyone from the top of a building. To prove to yourself that you’re better than them. Or maybe it’s just putting on a show—mostly of what they don’t have, she replies. Like those strange Instagram couples, with their daily Reels, she says, playing along with me. 

The rain has passed. The storm. Rauw Alejandro’s “Ron Cola” is playing over the speakers. And I tell Valeria that I like the pair they make with Rosalía. Even if Tangana broke up with her—or she broke up with him. Because any love that can continue to live on, in whatever form, is real and uninhibited. Celebrities feel it more intensely than we do because of all those cameras and the media that creates a hype around every situation they go through. So we should feel lucky not to be well-known (yet). But it’s going to happen, she says. It’s going to happen that you’ll be a good artist and a good writer, my love. And you’ll also learn to paint better than you already do, I tell her. I’ll teach you everything. And together we can move forward. This is the best thing that could have happened to us, she says. It’s good to talk to you every day, love, I say. And even though distance separates us, we still have our words; these conversations, the time that slips away quickly, but remains etched in our minds . I’d choose you a thousand times over. Not seeing anyone else. I wouldn’t mind if the world fell apart, because you’re by my side. It’s good to know you’re not bored of me yet, she tells me. And it’s good that you’re not tired of who I am yet, I tell her. I’m not going to get tired of you, my love. The days will pass, just as the months will pass. Just as it seemed so far away for us to see each other again. And the weeks flew by like a gust of wind, and you were already in Guayaquil, and we were already traveling together. It’s good to grow old, I tell her. Like the couple we saw on those days at the beach. A man, by nature, is a simple man. I’d like to grow old like that with you. Sitting under a hut, drinking beer, and chatting all day. Exactly like that , my love, she says. 

The temperature has dropped a little more, and it’s cold in New Jersey. We both stayed there talking a little longer about the people out there thinking about loving or being loved. We both wondered what would become of our ex-partners and their new lives. We both smiled at every word, at every gesture. We’ve been together for almost 365 days. Enough time has passed, and enough has happened. There are too many murders on the streets to try to kill love. And there are countless suicides to let a beautiful idea disappear. Socrates, in his conversation with Diotima in Plato’s *The Symposium*, says that “love aspires to beauty.” What better way for me to go along with that than to say that, for that reason, beauty is to love. Admiration for the other, the way the other can be. 

Growth, from the deepest depths to the greatest heights, is also love. Being able to love one another in poverty as well as in wealth. The nature of Eros is reflected in the ways that, night or day, living beings resemble one another. You intertwine to create a new being. There is no point in loving unless it is to create and recreate oneself. We were both laughing by then. And I was having a few too many rum drinks, and she’d had two beers. There was no point in arguing about what had already been, or about what might be. It’s good to talk about everyday things. It’s good to talk with the one you love. Are we loved, or are we lovers? Could we be both? I’d like to believe so. That we can have the freedom to choose the other. To lose ourselves in the other and vice versa. Can we reach old age, still loving one another? How can we be sure that love is possible after forty years? Where, in what part of the world, is the perfect story to be found? Does perfection exist? Are we perfect? Of course not. We are not machines. As humans, we are prone to mistakes. And we turn those mistakes into stories. And we turn those stories into our reasons for living. It would be to ask ourselves if it is possible to love without possessing, to believe without seeing, and even to be certain that eternity has been here for a long time. And that, for that reason, a brief moment with the beloved becomes eternal, fleeting, and yet imperishable. 

"Sometimes," Valeria tells me, "falling into the void means knowing that you can fly, too." 

The night is wearing on and the music is blaring. Valeria and I are getting ready to dance in front of the camera. So, that’s where this hybrid ends, and I’ll leave you with this: 

“Love is freedom; it is not about choosing a path, but about rebelling against all those who want to impose one on you,” Merlí.