Abrasive love content; Unrequitement
Maybe it’s not fair that I loved you but you didn’t love me.
Maybe I don’t want to remember all we said to never not forget we would always be.
Maybe it’s too late to return to all that we were.
Maybe I’m too pissed that you let it all be over.
Maybe if I could I’d reverse all that we call time.
Maybe all you should have said was that you loved me too.
Maybe.
” Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. ”
SOREN KIERKEGAARD.
Love is like guns. It isn’t inherently bad, just like guns aren’t bad. It’s just inherently dangerous. A gun is a machine made to fire off bullets and shells propelled by explosive force. That’s danger for whatever those bullets and shells are propelled into. Love is dangerous because it inherently consumes. It is a strong feeling of affection. The thing though is when you add human beings to both mixes in all their specific individual volatility, you have an even more indescribably dangerous situation. Love and its rendering or its acceptance as the expression of the one who loves, is like grenades blowing up inside that subject when unreciprocated- a nuclear emotional implosion by psychological and biological decree; like a gun pointed at the guy who killed Keanue Reeves’ character’s dog in that movie I still haven’t completely watched.
I feel that love should be this thing that’s sold at a store or something, with warning signs and precautions on the bottle or whatever. Probably a generic precaution like “WARNING: Abrasive love content” with a corroded heart sign, similar to the flame sign that goes by “WARNING: Flammable,” on bottles and cans of flammable stuff.
I feel those that are able to purchase or use it, should have a certain fortified and/or fortifiable constitution determined by some standardized testing approved by a global organization deemed credible in that respect. Then such human beings in compliance with the requirements of the test could even thereafter be issued with licenses for any future interactions with love. Maybe a training school could help? Like as part of health care, that training is appropriated as a basic human right interrelated with the right to health, provided by the Government and other well wishing NGOs? I’m just spit balling here.
Don’t get me wrong. Love is in fact catastrophic for all somehow. It’s just other times and in different ways more catastrophic for particular individuals. There are those who need rehabilitation from alcohol, for example. Not because of alcohol as a substance, but because of whatever inward constitution is compelling them to so heavily consume and be controlled by the effects of the substance. There are those that can after a glass or two comfortably decide that that’s enough alcohol for the moment. There are even those that don’t drink alcohol. Maybe we need a love rehabilitation sort of thing that’s commonly conceded as the proper next step for someone affected by love content, the way rehab or AA is that commonly proper next step for an alcoholic. Because the fact is there is no one that doesn’t want or need love.
As none of that is happening or going to happen for that matter any time soon because we still have so much further to go up Maslow’s pyramid and his hierarchy of needs, there’s art and best friends and diaries to turn to in expression that distraction may momentarily be found in sublimation. The love equation is not easily balanced.
So then what? No love at all? Love for some and not for others? All in and to the death like Heathcliff and Katherine in Wuthering Heights? It all just feels like this unescapable set up. Life puts you between a rock and a hard place. Because as humans, we all need and crave connection. We need to love and be loved. But there’s rejection, and death and disease and culture and folly and many other variables to consider, but especially that first one – Unrequitement. What to do with Unrequitement?
It’s like asking what to do after being burned. You’ll have been burnt. It won’t change the scars and wounds you’ll bear from the burn. It’s all about handling the situation felt most immediately; the pain. After the pain, we can take the rest I guess as it comes. We have to accept it and step out, right? Just because I got burnt using the gas stove, doesn’t mean I’m negated from ever using it again. In any case, I can’t prevent love that in this case is metaphorically represented by the gas stove. It sort of just happens to you. Cupid and his arrows, right?
Then there’s telling yourself, “I just need to be more careful the next time I’m around fire.” Maybe? The indisputable fact is there is no guarantee that I will never be burnt again. That sucks on a whole other level. So much indecision. Prevention? Cure? Can love be prevented? Can love be cured? I told you. Life sets us up all the time and sardonically watches us writhe and seethe in confusion and bewilderment at just how much it sucks to love and not be loved among other things it enjoys to see us writhe and seethe concerning.
The worst part is the unrequiting party in this situation of non- reciprocation, is completely within their right. You can’t really blame them. They just don’t feel the same way you do. They can’t help it. They can’t decide to. That’s why in the end all you can muster is the conclusion that the whole thing just sucks. It sucks.
Life will do life. It will keep pushing you back out there to get burned some more because you don’t have a choice. Therefore, I posit that the choice we have begins after the painful ordeal, to either keep on believing in possibilities and goodness and happiness or not to, and die lonely and bitter like Ebenezer Scrooge visited by ghosts at Christmas time. The truth is, albeit all that went wrong for Heathcliff and Katherine, most people would prefer filling those shoes than no shoes at all. That’s why Wuthering Heights is a classic and my favorite literary work.
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe and dark, motionless and airless, it will change. It will not be broken, it will be become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
No body wants that.
To love is to be vulnerable.
To crave connection is to be vulnerable. To crave relation, constitution and construction is to be vulnerable.
Humans crave connection. Humans crave relation. Humans crave constitution and construction too.
Not confliction. But that’s what we get sometimes.
Life can be caustic af sometimes.
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