While washing the dishes right now, it came to me that the reason people want us to love them, at least when it comes to Mikey and me, is that our love can’t be bought. It can only be earned. To have our love shine on them feels good.

I remember when I figured this out the first time—how giving love had to come without any thought of repayment. Because if you expect to be repaid, then there is a price. A price indicates a finite value. Love should be infinite.

But not just anyone gets it. Certainly not people who just want to be adored. People who go out into the world thinking they are shiny, charming objects. Those people end up being exhausting because they take take take with their neediness. Their need is infinite. Their charm wears off like a cheap veneer.

We know how to charm people. It feels cheap. We want to be loved for something more integral than glamours.

But then there are those who just find their way into our hearts. We love them from moment one. They never had to do anything. They just were so magnificent that we were and continue to be smitten. It wasn’t charm. It was character. It was soul.

I’m in love with ten different people for their good, their bad and their ugly. They make me swoon for who they are. I get giddy when I know I’m going to see them. It doesn’t wear off with time. I keep thinking it will. I’m so in love with them I think my heart might burst.

Is the heart fickle, or is it just truer than we know in inexplicable ways? Why is mine so selective? Why do I find most people insufferable and boring? Why do I find the idea of tolerance so disgusting? And how do so many people just go through life with lukewarm relationships?

And then I see how people cook and dress and decorate and I realize their lack of passion. And I feel so isolated. So closed off from the rest of the world in my eccentricities and proclivities. I live in the margins of the color spectrum. I may be black and white in whom I love. But I am every shade in how I do it. That intensity is my burden. It is also my blessing.