I Am Us… A Philosophy of Love and Polyamory "So do you think that is more you or because we are us?” I answered without thinking: ”I am us.” *********************************** Three little words stared out from where I had written them… I. Am. Us. There is no longer a me or a you. There is not my journey and your journey… this is not the stretch along the road of life that we journey together or any other metaphorical nonsense. We are not two hearts inexorably twined together, two halves of a whole… nothing you would find in a pithy quote on a Hallmark card. I am us. It is incredibly simple, actually. I blame polyamory. We have found ourselves in a triadic relationship for our entire lives together. There has always been the friend or lover who completed our union… the catalyst to our actions and the lens through which we could understand ourselves. But more importantly, we have always needed a place to focus our love. Loving each other was as natural as breathing from the very beginning. We always loved us, and us always made sense. We were our favorite couple. We never fought over anything that ever actually mattered – people talk about soulmates, but I don’t actually think that is what we are. We are more than that. Not two souls mated together, but just the one soul encompassing both of us. I am us. We even fall in love together. That was what put the final seal of our unity… she did. How hard was it to wrap our minds around it, the idea that you loved her and I loved you and she loved me and so on… everyone loved everyone and over time the two of us became the three of us. I am us. You are us. She is us. Loving her taught us how to love each other better, and we stopped worrying about your dynamics or my dynamics and suddenly it was just us… and she was who the us loved, and she was us. And when we are us, then it is easy to look at a conversation of hierarchy and just shake our heads and laugh a bit… when your love is not kitchen table polyamory either because it is just too small of an idea to encompass the boundless oneness that ties you together. Time and jealousy are the killers of polyamorous tranquility, or so they say… but how can I be jealous of us? Your time with her is simply part of us, as is my own. Even when we are not together, we are still us. How could I ever be jealous of myself? So many people on a path to divide their love amongst a variety of lovers, never realizing that the answer is not to be found in a more clever division, but rather a childishly simple multiplication. I am us. I want your wants and I need your needs. I taste her kisses with your mouth and your heart breaks when I hurt… her thoughts push my thoughts into your thoughts, and although there is not agreement there is always unity. How long did we discuss the concept of desire? Night after night and year after year in an endless conversation that emptied bottle after bottle of the rich red wine that we shared… ”Fill our glasses again, just a splash.” We could fill an ocean with the splashes that topped us off, not wanting to let a conversation go quite yet even as night was turning into morning. And your desires became my desires and mine became yours; and ultimately she was the only thing either of truly desired… not simply in her body but that bright soul that fit so perfectly into our own. I laugh when I think about how we struggled with it; ”What does it all mean? Where will it all end?” If I saw us then from the perspective of now, I would condescendingly pat our heads and ruffle our hair and find our worry to be adorable. The reality is that no one knows the future, and many relationships end… But ours will not… and for the simplest of reasons… I am us. I could no more be without you than I could be without me… and I who have not a shred of faith in that which I cannot see, I can rest in the ironclad truth that she is also us. And we are her. You are us. As am I. You and I and she… three drops of paint swirled together on the canvas of our lives, and who is to say which color is which anymore? I can see the shades and hues that each of us have brought to the developing portrait, but how does one unblend the colors once combined? And that is polyamory and that is love. All of the other questions fade away in the light of that one gloriously simple realization… I am us.