Your Interest In My Love

I’ve always enjoyed read­ing about peo­ple who are in love, but most of all when that love is unre­quit­ed. Vivid pic­tures paint­ed in details about a saucy diastema, the observed rit­u­al of walk­ing by a cer­tain table every day to get a cup of water for paint, an unso­licit­ed brush against a hip. Stories about awk­ward­ness, weak­ness, burn­ing desire.

Perhaps it’s because I can relate to these expe­ri­ences, or because they make me feel like I’m less alone in my own clum­sy deal­ings with the oppo­site sex. Even though there are count­less sto­ries writ­ten about unre­quit­ed love, there aren’t enough. For the few of us who are “oppressed by the fig­ures of beau­ty”, as Leonard Cohen calls it, noth­ing makes us feel bet­ter. All we can do is silent­ly com­mis­er­ate with the words of those who share them­selves in this way.

When I look through my old entries, it seems like most of them are about love or a torch I car­ry in one way or anoth­er, and how this affects me.

And some­times I won­der if this is the rea­son why peo­ple come here to read my words.

9 comments

  1. If I can para­phrase Franz Kafka who was writ­ing about rev­o­lu­tion and what invari­ably fol­lows in the way of gov­ern­ment: “Every pas­sion evap­o­rates, leav­ing behind the slime of a new rela­tion­ship”. Perhaps that explains why we are all drawn to peek at the emo­tions of oth­ers in terms of love; it’s a reminder of what we had and lost or of our fan­tasies, those ful­filled and oth­er­wise.

    Oh, and almost every­one is fas­ci­nat­ed by the pain of oth­ers in the same way that line-ups of gawk­ers always form at an acci­dent or dis­as­ter scene.

  2. I find it com­fort­ing (in a strange way of course) to see that oth­ers have dealt with some of the same pains and joys I have expe­ri­enced or are cur­rent­ly going through. It helps me to sort through my feel­ings and see the truth in them. But most often I love to feel the but­ter­flies and the gid­dy feel­ings or the pain and the tears that well up in my eyes that come from hear­ing about or see­ing dif­fer­ent paths in life.

  3. You were in my dream last night. Very odd. I havent had time to read here in quite some time and I most cer­tain­ly dont know you in real life — and yet, you were in my dream. You were tick­ling me and I woke up laugh­ing. I won­der how dreams work. Last time I was tick­led in a dream it was by one of my best friends and that same night she passed away. Definitely not mean­ing that you will as well, but ever since I have had this feel­ing that tick­ling would mean some­thing spe­cial if ever occured in my dreams again. And that it would only be done by some­one that were with­in my close cir­cle of friends. Maybe I feel like that because I would nev­er let any­one that I do not know come close to me like that. It’s very inti­mate act to me, not only the phys­i­cal touch but also to laugh in that heart­felt and mutu­al under­stand­ing way. However, it was very nice in the dream.

    Ah well, sor­ry about the essay I just thought I should let you know. Not that I think it mat­ters much but at least, it made me think of you and come here read for a bit this morn­ing. Hope you’re doing good.

  4. For me, pre­cious­ness is vast­ly under­revered in today’s world, and your writ­ing revives it.

  5. @Michael — I take absolute­ly no inter­est in car acci­dents and the like; it’s sto­ries of attrac­tion and love that inter­est me. I’m not sure if this is relat­ed to pain, but I sus­pect it’s more basic than that. Even when unre­quit­ed (or per­haps espe­cial­ly when unre­quit­ed), love can be excit­ing when expe­ri­enced vic­ar­i­ous­ly.

    @Lucy — Then you share the same things that I do from read­ing about peo­ple in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. Now I under­stand why you come here!

    @Emma — That is a strange dream. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed about anoth­er blog­ger, although I’ve cer­tain­ly dreamed about peo­ple I’ve nev­er met before. There’s a cer­tain amount of pro­jec­tion we place in the char­ac­ters of such dreams, so I’m curi­ous if your pro­jec­tion of me is accu­rate. I’ve nev­er put much faith in dreams myself, only because noth­ing has ever come of them for me.

    @Xibee — There are so many here, the last thing I think of when it comes to my words is “pre­cious”, so it’s nice to know.

  6. My favorite posts of yours are your love/relationship/beauty posts.

    I like it because I’ve gone through it, I’m cur­rent­ly going through it, and it’s like silk against your skin to have some­one prop­er­ly write it out. Emote it out?

    You know you’re not alone, you get to rev­el in the melan­choly or unre­quit­ed love, you get to have the highs and lows of it all.…Love in stereo!

    does that make any sense?

    I’m sorry…I feel like I post respons­es too much…

  7. @Zaira — That makes per­fect sense…I’ll have to remem­ber the line “love in stereo” for an entry one day. What a great metaphor!

    And by no means do you post respons­es too much. Feedback is always appre­ci­at­ed, espe­cial­ly from those I can relate to.

  8. Ah, the words to reply on sub­ject of unre­quit­ted,

    What’s the point of vir­tu­al sex? More frus­tra­tion?
    “I love it!” she said. “There is some­thing so sexy about frus­tra­tion, a fan­ta­sy that can nev­er be ful­filled.”

    Neil, http://www.citizenofthemonth.com/2008/10/05/change/

  9. I have to agree with that to a cer­tain extent. There’s some­thing about the unat­tain­able that makes it more appeal­ing. Wanting what we can’t have. Although I’m sure that most peo­ple grow out of this phase at some point in their lives. Happy peo­ple, at least.

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