On not loving TOO much

Cross-posted at Koonj.

I love getting email. I don’t always respond to them in time, but I really like getting emails. I love getting messages on flickr. I love comments on my blog. But I hate phone calls. Well, why don’t I love phone calls the same way? Am I immersed in fake reality? Am I sadly devoid of the ability to truly connect?

Sometimes I wonder - Am I turning into a geeky guy?

Every now and again, recently, I’ve noticed that I avert my eyes when someone looks at me too warmly and lovingly. Is it because I’m not used to warmth and love anymore?

Back in Islamabad, I remember two North American students were shocked by all the hand-holding and gazing-into-the-eyes among women. “There’s a lot of that stuff going on here,” they whispered to each other. But regardless of the fact that there was some action going on when the girls cuddled up to each other, most of it wasn’t pure and simple lesbianism. It was love. I bet you chuckled at that - love, eh? Yes, just love. Because people love to love and when they love each other, they hug and embrace. It doesn’t have to be gay.

Likewise, the photo Svend took of two manly men in Lahore walking hand in hand - no, pinky intertwined with pinky - is not representative of latent homosexuality. At least not necessarily.

In this (American) culture, we get uncomfortable when Sam gets TOO loyal to Frodo. We giggle when all the hobbits jump up and down on the convalescent Frodo’s bed.

When I had recently arrived here, one day, I held the hand of a friend, and she snapped at me - I was making us look like we were gay. Now I have normalised reducing my emotional give-and-take in public. Actually, I believe I’ve reduced my emotional give-and-take entirely.

Consider the phrase “that is so gay” used often to describe same-sex friendship. Same-sex friendship in this culture must not be too warm. It must be regulated to keep at a moderate temperature, otherwise you have silly jokes about girls having pillow-fights in their underwear. When I came to the US, I discovered how women got uncomfortable with hand-holding beyond a handshake. It’s a culture deprived of physical contact - except if it’s heterosexual. Even heterosexual relationships in popular culture immediately turn into intercourse, as if mere holding of hands and gazing into each other’s eyes were embarrassingly inadequate, or not enjoyable enough.

And then there’s our sad obsession with twisted sexuality. I couldn’t watch Lucy and the fawn in “Narnia” with a straight face. JonBenet Ramsey and Law & Order SVU have taken over our minds. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a mother and an aunt, and I’ve see enough twisted people in my day to have a very healthy awareness of what’s going on out there. But sometimes it seems like it has taken over our everyday emotional exchanges.

Apart from twisted stuff, when someone is nice to us, we wonder if they are needy or clingy. When they pay us compliments, we wonder what they want out of us. We wonder exactly why they are being so warm and nice.

When we went to the hospital last month, we saw this young woman at the desk who had the sweetest, warmest, almost shy, spontaneous smile. And I’m not gay. Svend and I simply had to discuss her for a while. I said she reminded me of Pakistan, that she must be ethnic, or from a small town, or a protected girl from a conservative religious family.
If she didn’t have the wall-behind the-eyes look, surely she must be different. People don’t just overflow with affection indiscriminately. You don’t go around giving, giving, giving. It’s wasteful. It’s unseemly. It’s paindoo, or hick. It’s unsophisticated. It’s not indicative of a suave, urbane/urban, smart, aware, educated individual. A smart person rides the subway and the elevator with the blank unsmiling look, avoiding all eyes. And that blankness has taken over our lives.

I noticed this when a new friend complimented me on my “radiant beauty” the other day. I’m chuckling inwardly as I type that of course. And that’s another gift of living in the US - everything is just so damned funny. Nothing, I swear, nothing is serious anymore. Religion, love, family, authority, - everything is lined with a big cynical joke followed by an “I’m just kidding.” Tell me I’m beautiful or amazing, tell me you would like to be my friend, and I automatically laugh, instead of being moved and happy. Maybe it’s a strategy to avoid the pain of loneliness. Maybe it’s meant to avoid the sudden traumatic thaw in one’s frozen heart. We can’t switch too fast from solitary lives to warm closeness. So we avoid the warmth and the closeness just so we can get through the solitary lives that typify our normal existence. We push away love because it hurts, like trauma.

Meantime, the starvation in our hearts throws out neuroses that we can’t address. When we are full of anxiety, loss, loneliness, need, and we can’t express that need, what do we do? How uncool is it to need? To break up the rugged individual act? To say I need, I want? I need a hug? I want a cuddle? I want to hold longer than a quick hug? Ugh, who has the time, someone might respond. And then how hurt you’d be. How humiliating.

The giving and receiving of love has become a strange thing, one that must be encased in humour, or safely relegated to cyberspace. Outside of words on a page or screen, it is too real, too concrete, too hurtful. It reminds me of lost treasures, a lost ability to open up and embrace, a dying ability to throw back my head and laugh with abandon.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who used to love. She loved and she gave freely. And she was laughed at for it. She was naive, they said. No one is unselfish; everyone has their own agenda. Loving freely is stupid. She didn’t believe it. And then one day, she woke up and she had turned into those other people - holding back, miserly in her emotional life, sneering at the exuberance of emotion. Her love became regulated - by time, money, work.

She died.

SubhanAllah Koonj, I couldn’t have said it better, I mean really I would not have been able to capture it as well as you have.

“That’s so gay” is used for so many things we used to say that much more about homework assignments or things we didn’t like than about people.

I used to say , I could not stand to be touched and then I became Muslim and sisters were always trying to kiss, hug, interlock arms, and hold my hand and so I gradually began to relax.

And then I was in the ICU yesterday, and one of the nurses touched my arm so softly and spontaneously to express her sympathy and it was so sweet and moving. It made me cry.

And then I never used to cry, like not ever for any reason, and always felt awkward when I saw others cry until my heart softened a few years ago.

I could go on but this I feel is becoming a post. Koonj, you writing does this to me more than anyone else’s. I keep these emotions buried deep inside of me and would never share them but your writing brings them to the surface such that I have to express them in writing to be able to let go. If it wasn’t 3am I’d probably write the post now.

Salamaat,
Wow Koonj. The last line killed something in me too… :(

You capture the struggle of immigrants so well Mashaallah.

Embarrassed love to both of you, Apple and Maliha. I’m glad this piece, rather clumsily written, touched something in you. And I’m really very glad something came to the surface, Apple.

An excellent post, filled with truth of love’s limits in America. We have lost something, no doubt, thanks to our Puritan ancestors (well, not mine actually). My parents were from Old Europe, and they followed the tradition of men kissing men without being thought of as gay, as an expression of regard and custom. My father kissed all his kids every day of his life, sons and daughter, and I kiss my son and daughter too, even though they are grown. They don’t find it strange, and have gotten over the embarrassment of it, I think lol.

Without the ooutward expression of love, the inward slowly dies, as you have rightly said.

Ya Haqq!

Ya Haqq, Irving, on the limits placed on love in America because it is somehow unseemly.

you know what i noticed when i came to live here… the lack of concern for other people, or rather, the high level of self-concern.

when I started university here (coming from a high school where I had friends of 7 years or more), I felt like I could not find anyone that I could really relate too… and it was not a culture thing because i grew up in trinidad which is more or less pretty ‘westernized’, it was what you have discussed here, just lack of real love! I felt it so much, i felt so empty and lost, of course then I found the mousehunter mercy from Allah.

thanks koonj for discussing something that i think we all feel.

When I used to go to evening Islamic school there was a group of Arab girls who regularly greeted each other with hugs and kisses. One Indian-British teacher was deadly against it and even complained to their parents. Love and admiration is being controlled in the West. 

An immensely thought-provoking and beautiful post. The last sentence was a killer!

Masha’Allah, great post!
Personally, I haven’t experienced it much… I’ve lived most of my life in relative isolation. The only people I really see on a regular basis are the people at my Islamic centre. We’re always affectionate with each other there, though… the sisters come from all over the world, and since most of us don’t have any extended family living here, we’re very close with each other. When we get together we usually end up leaning against each other or putting our arms around each other.
Anyway, even though I haven’t experienced the withholding of affection, I *have* noticed how much people tend to put everything in a sick, twisted light! It’s really quite disgusting… The most innocent of actions end up being seen as some perversion.
Subhan’Allah!

May Allah protect us and purify our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls, ameen!

Your little sister in Islam,
Mouse

Why do I relate to everything you write? MashaAllah, powerful as always.

I remember when I was literally “fresh off the boat” in America, in 6th grade. How I would hold hands with my best friend, an Indian girl, and be told by my classmates how I was acting so gay. To me it was the most natural thing to do. Ofcourse, I stopped. I have a friend now who is always happy to see me, more happy than what makes me comfortable. She is hugging me, or drapped over me, in every picture we have together. Even my mom noticed it and chuckled. I know my friend has a pure heart, full of love for me, and is naturally affectionate, but it makes me uncomfortable. Why? I dont know. I’m not sure what happened to me.

Salaam dear Koonj,

Amazing post, I relate on so many levels!

I was one of those kids who looked askance at men holding hands when I moved to Pak from the US as a teenager…and then I discovered really close, loving, loyal girl friends in my high school who were completely unlike my more distant American school friends.

Then there was the time back in the US when Ami shook off my hand lest “people think we’re lesbians, beta.” I replied, “You’d be lucky to get me, Naniji!”

But inside it made me feel sad that we are so afraid of labels that it stopped us from loving wide open.

I love that my family and friends usually love deeply and raucously and fully. They drive me nuts sometimes but I never have to wonder how they feel.

The sturggle is, as you so rightly pointed out, not letting it die within us in a culture that stereotypes love into narrow categories and tries to snuff the rest of its rainbow out.

XO,
B

PS - I’ve always wanted to call you but sensed you might not be a phone person!

i thought about this around marriage time - how in college, my friends and i shared affection for each other that was often physical, lots of hugs, sitting close to each other, linking arms while walking, etc. and i can just hear my husband saying now, “that is sooo gay!” but even though it was replaced (well, temporarily) when we got married, i still miss it. never had this physical affection in the family growing up, or at least not after i turned “bad”, and it doesn’t really mean much anyway once it’s confounded with physical “discipline” (who wants to kiss the hand that strikes you?).

what you said about the humor thing is so spot on. “Maybe it’s meant to avoid the sudden traumatic thaw in one’s frozen heart. ” you know, i’m cool, i’m not sentimental or vulnerable… why is it such an aspiration to be so untouchable?
i used to say that growing up was a process of learning who not to trust.
that’s part of why having Baby now has so many healing aspects. you can’t stay closed when Baby grabs your face and wipes his open mouth back and forth on your cheek for love. (still, there is something to say for receiving the same openness from a contemporary )

I’m a distant person, I think, I have come to think…I learned to loathe the hugs my mother wanted to give me, because she gave them when I was sad, when I was breaking her heart, because there was no other way to comfort me.  I wanted WORDS.  I wanted her to say she understood.  I wanted her to say it was impossible, what I was asking, if that was the case. I came away thinking that she, and hence everyone else, had no clue.  Before that, I was averse to people touching me. I don’t believe I was ever abused, but I wonder if someone sat me down and explained how strangers can be hurtful.  When I am in a relationship, I often feel I’m pushed away, so I wonder if I suddenly try to overcompensate for my fear of everyone else now that I have let this one person come close. Is it me, or is it them?  Now: the real reason I tell you all this is that I read so many comments about people who feel similar distance when they come to america, come to feel alienated, feel that everyone else is so comfortable with each other.  I have actually never been outside America (I don’t think Canada counts), and I have felt this way most of my life.  I don’t think I’m alone. I think it’s a human thing, not a cultural thing.  That’s my two cents.

PS: Not sure how that last postscript came across so just to clarify - I’m more of an e-mail person than a phone person too

Wow, I loved this post as well Shabana!

Definitely so many levels I could relate to, so many incidents I can remember where expressing physical affection made me “weird” if not “gay.”

*Sigh* I guess each place presents it’s own unique struggles and creates it’s own certain blindspots and this is yet another issue one must negotiate with, while living in this country.

p.s. I HATE the phrase “that’s so gay.” I want to respond “You’re so lame”  in that same tone you know? you know what I’m saying? Maybe I’ll call you to make it clearer

virtual hugs,
Momo

Poorly put together as my thoughts were, and dissatisfied as I still am with my own articulation - I still think that, especially judging from these responses-kaleido, deb, mystic, we are all love-starved (like warm paki) and many of us are, in some ways, love-constipated. Now that phrase came across wrong. What it means is that we do have love to give, but the ability to open up and receive and give has become strained.

Shaz, “the high-level of self-concern” is true. And do you ever wonder if you would have been so keen to find the mousehunter if you hadn’t been lacking in warmth of friendships? of course this may nto apply to you but I wonder if the excessive need for romance and marriage is related to being love-starved in general - here or elsewhere.

Thank you, Suroor, I’m glad you felt the post. And my little Mouse, I’m glad you’ve found a community of sisters.

Maleeha, I think that what happened to you may have happened to many of us, quietly.

“The struggle is, as you so rightly pointed out, not letting it die within us in a culture that stereotypes love into narrow categories and tries to snuff the rest of its rainbow out.” Baraka, you’re one of the examples I’d give for the free giving and receiving of love. My family loves crazily and chaotically too - but never coldly.

ayesha, now more than ever, as baby is more interactive, having the baby really is more healing in such a poignant way. But affection from an adult really is needed too.

deb, I think it’s both (human and cultural). Odd how our parents leave their imprints on us, isn’t it.

Momo, each culture certainly has its own peculiar challenges. And I look forward to hearing you snap back ‘you’re so lame.’

To each one of you - here’s a hug - a long one, one that allows you to cry if you need to, for a while - followed with an embarrassed pat on the back.

Amazingly well said. And this:

Nothing, I swear, nothing is serious anymore. Religion, love, family, authority, - everything is lined with big cynical joke followed by an “I’m just kidding.�

knocked me over.

wow, amazing post, this place is nearly as good as my sis Maliha’s guess shes got some strong competition!

My father in law plays footsie with my mother in laws sisters, husband. Trust me when I watched those two in action, I felt OH my gawd!How gay, but overtime came to reaslise that it was nothing of the sort.

I think people are always on their favorite radio station, WIIFM (Whats in it for me) we see lives as our own challenges and actions and in the process we have lost so much. However, what we should do I think is be a little different: Be interested in what the other
person wants and needs. (Get the other personʼs point of view and see things from his
angle as well as your own. Be interested in helping others, not only yourself.)

Only then can we begin to understand others and I think only then can we truly love each other.

Ws, H

I think we’re too busy here in the West being suspicious of others motives - if someone smiles at you or calls you, the initial thought is “wonder what they want”. Its because we have resigned ourselves to the same behaviours - maybe contact someone if we need something or need a favour.

I adore the affection that my mother or grandmother show me, but admittedly would feel uneasy if my female cousin showed me the same. Why? Not too sure why. I lock arms with my female friends when walking down the street, no-one considers it gay. Sometimes i’ll hold my mums hand when crossing a busy road. So perhaps its restricted to how close your relationship with that other person is.

I think maybe we need to show our emotions more - when we are happy, smile- even if that means smiling at a random person on the street. It certainly brightens up your and their day.