THE PAINS OF LOVE Or The Illusions Of Fantasized Love...
Has anybody ever told you that love will sometimes bug you like a mosquito zooming in your ears on a sweaty night, not letting you sleep, sucking the life blood out of you whenever it has a chance, causing you to itch and scratch all over, making you sick?
Or that love will grow and spread like weeds on an abandoned garden until it completely takes you over?
Or that love will intoxicate and impair you, making you drive your life carelessly, until you crash and burn?
Well, those among you who have ever fell in love somebody they shouldn’t have will agree with me when I say that these are gross understatements. I am sorry to say that, not very long ago, I fell in love. Or rather, love pretty much decided to fall upon me with all its weight.
I should never have fed that young love germ when it first found its way to my mind and stared at me with those hungry eyes. But what can I say? In spite of all the flaming red flags, I just couldn’t resist… Plus, truth be told, it made my meaningless life so much better to have the idea of that love in my thoughts. Besides, how bad could it be to feed that little sliver of a notion, anyway? It was so tiny, it barely occupied any space... It couldn’t possibly harm anyone! And so it was that I fed it, and after that, as it was to be expected, it wouldn’t leave me alone. It followed me everywhere, always whining for more.
One day I suddenly realized I had made the fatal mistake of letting that idea of love penetrate my heart through the bottomless pit of my mind. I had adopted it and made it mine. It was then that it really took over. It was not just an occasional thought anymore. It was in my fantasies. In my dreams. In my hopes. It demanded so much attention that very soon my whole life revolved around it.
I started waking up in the middle of the night thinking about it. Many times I just couldn’t sleep, and would lay awake, wondering if the (quite unaware) subject of my love ever lost any sleep over me. I felt this aching yearning for my unrequited love. I burned, I tossed and turned, I dreamed and longed for my love. The feeling intoxicated me like a hot, humid Summer night. It made my heart throb, pulse, beat to the rhythm of my awakened senses. I could see the face, the smile, I could hear the spontaneous laugh. I could track my love’s scent, I could almost touch it, taste it. I felt its presence in the dark. But in the end, all that was left was a sense of cold emptiness.
Sometimes I got the feeling that both of us connected on a deeper lever than most people. I felt we understood things better than the others, we knew what’s going on. We got it. We got the subtleties, the nuances of life. So I believed my love was attracted to me, too. I thought I knew. I felt I knew.
Soon it was not enough to make myself crazy over that love. And since I just couldn’t live alone with it any longer, I decided to share my freshly acquired taste for misery (which, as you well know, loves company).
Of course, at that time I didn’t think of it as sharing my misery. One thing that you can always count on love doing for you is to completely disable your common sense and distort your point of view, which up until then had been in perfect working order. Under the influence of new love, I suddenly felt that there was so much more to life than what met the eyes. There were answers waiting to be found, chances to be taken, endless possibilities, countless
Vertical Divider
choices. Nothing was iron-clad. Circumstances could be changed. Life was open and constantly evolving. And, God, it was beautiful! It was so beautiful!
I hadn’t felt like that in such a long time that I had forgotten what it was like. To be alive, to experience all those powerful emotions, to feel your heart beating so fast it might explode, to feel yourself vibrating, pulsating, the blood pumping in your veins... It had to be worth all the risks, the drudgery, the pain... right? Well, that should show you right there how little I know. It was so much fun while it lasted, though. All of a sudden, I had all these newly-found, great-sounding beliefs! I believed that love was always good, so sharing that love should always be right. And I thought I needed my love to know that, whenever it wanted me, I’d be there. Even if for just a fleeting moment in time, I’d be there... Even if only in dreams... And if we ever dared to let it start, even if it did not last, it still would have been worth every second of it. Wonderful memories of great beginnings: it’s the best life has to offer. Now, did that sound great, or what?
And I actually thought this would make it easier on us. To know. To be able to enjoy it. To strengthen our connection. After all, I was sure that we both already knew it, felt it, and had to pretend. Talking about it just made it official. It would be like becoming members of a secret club. Bottom line: anything to justify my need to blab about it.
So, I said it. I shouldn’t have ignored the red flags and confessed my love, but I did. There was nothing to be done about it anymore. I couldn’t take it back if I wanted to. I did it. And I didn’t care. It was out. I was glad. At least for awhile.
Then came all the dark moments, full of doubt. I had been very stupid to believe that there would be no harm in acknowledging the fact that I was in love with somebody. Things immediately started changing between the two of us, as it was unavoidable. And I worried over the possibility of having damaged the most precious thing I had in this world: our special connection, our friendship. I panicked over the thought of things not being the same anymore. I had braced myself for everything else: rejection, reprobation... But not that. Not living without what we used to have together.
And then, the inevitable: the pain! Sometimes I couldn’t even breathe, it was so suffocating. I cried myself limp. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Every corny song on the radio seemed to be talking about us. I thought constantly about my love. I lived for the next time we would be able to be close to each other. I survived only because of the energy I drew from that love. And yet, through all of this, I had to keep functioning. I had to get up and go to work and smile to people and go on pretending... You’ve been there; I’m sure you know the drill.
In the middle of all this chaos, I still wanted to believe that the Universe was unfolding as it should. Maybe there was a higher purpose in all of this. Maybe what happened was meant to expand our horizons, and make us realize that we had more in ourselves than we believed we did. That we could face difficult situations that we never thought we could. That we could handle more than we thought possible.
Or, maybe, all it really meant was that life sucks big time.
My love said reality is never as good as fantasy. Yes, that must be true, even though I didn’t want to see it for a while. People say love is blind. Not true. Lust is blind. Love sees all; it just chooses to ignore it. Or misinterpret it. Or think it can change it later. I thought I saw my love’s true colors, with flaws and weaknesses, just as I knew mine. But I had temporarily forgotten that people grow so comfortable with the lies they live that they will go to great lengths to preserve them; they won’t think twice about pushing you overboard if you rock the boat, rather than having to deal with the storm.
Scared of sharing such a powerful feeling and its obvious consequences, my love finally ran away from me. And so it is that we will never know what could have been. We will never taste each other’s lips, touch the warmth of each other’s skin; we will never have long nights of passion together. Our minds will never merge. My love will never be mine, even for that fleeting moment in time.
I paid a high price for that whole true love idea. And now that I am back to my old cynical and disillusioned self, I wish I had kicked it right out of my mind the first time it came around, staring at me with those big hungry eyes.