oh my god
Anteros — the brother of Eros — is the god of requited love. Love given in return. Mutual adoration and affection. We don’t hear as much about him as his far sexier sibling. But he is unquestionably beautiful.
Myth tells of the creation of Anteros to quell the loneliness of Eros. To mortals there is a resonance in the belief that returned love will salve the delirious yet sometimes fleeting seduction of Eros — the delicious wantonness he brings on his wings of pleasure. The irresistible look in his eye, the cheeky smile on his lips, the warm invitation of his arms.
Wisdom would tell that we should not forsake either brother for the other. But wisdom in matters of the heart can sometimes be scarce on the ground.
I worshipped you both in unison. I opened my house and heart to Eros and Anteros, watching you share the stage, exciting in your interplay, drowning in the joy of deifying you.
This was not the error, will never be the error. But only when I saw your feet of clay did I come to understand: making gods of you is a mark of love, but better still is the counterbalance of honouring myself as goddess, with love returned and pleasure bestowed upon us all. The delicate scales of my love needing to be righted. Eros. Anteros. God. Goddess. Light. Shade.
But always allowing for the feet of clay.
Because gods and goddesses do not have lives without pain and fear and suffering and sadness. They are as frail as the rest of us. So what more is there to do but make ourselves in their likeness. When I do so I stand in my own power rather than in the shadow of the light I bestowed upon you, and the glow radiates out to bathe us both. And when I fly next to you rather than watch you from below, we both share the effortless thrill of the shared slipstream.
So in the eternal return — and the unbearable lightness of being — I choose to soar, as one of them, the Erotes — the winged gods of love, of who Eros and Anteros are among their number. As a winged goddess I fly as high as the sun — with love and play and pleasure in abundance — with no wax upon my wings to bring me to earth. Instead I find within my core a solid grounding that is always my centre, that offers a security to allow for fearlessness, no matter how high I fly.
