Posts tagged with "love"

Reversal: Part 1 (The Inexplicable Catalyst)

19. Have you ever been in love? Unfortunately.

—LBJ

Well, here we are again.

I used to think that love was only pain. That was when the only expe­ri­ences I had with love were bad, when every­thing I ever felt was unre­quit­ed. The fact that I felt this way was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fact that I had­n’t got­ten over those feel­ings at the time. How child­ish, inex­pe­ri­enced, con­fused, imma­ture I was. This feel­ing shaped much of my per­son­al­i­ty in the last few years, although I’ve recent­ly been able to come out of such an emo­tion­al block­ade.

Having a rela­tion­ship where most feel­ings, how­ev­er con­fused, how­ev­er tor­ren­tial, how­ev­er tem­po­rary, were shared, has allowed me to come to terms with the past. Such an inci­dent has ben­e­fit­ed me great­ly, has let me know that I’m not so numb any­more, that it’s pos­si­ble for such a rela­tion­ship to exist even if I may nev­er expe­ri­ence it again. Perhaps I was so scared that I would nev­er fall in love again that any such expe­ri­ence would have shocked me into get­ting over what had hap­pened in the past.

Now I embrace the feel­ing of love, embrace the fact that the sim­ple act of lis­ten­ing to a song can fill me such poignan­cy, com­plete­ly regard­less of whether it’s good or bad. Not only do I enjoy being able to care for some­one, I enjoy miss­ing them as well, as dif­fi­cult as it can be. I like the fact that some­thing can turn me ter­ri­bly, illog­i­cal­ly weak. Every emo­tion involved, whether it’s plea­sur­able or painful, fills me with the urge to write, to cre­ate, to express. This is what I look for. This is what I need.

Now only good can come of love.

Mind Muffler

It always inter­ests me to learn how some peo­ple are changed so sud­den­ly in their lives. An inci­dent, whether it’s retire­ment, grad­u­a­tion, death, or any­thing of such a mag­ni­tude, cause some to have new rev­e­la­tions or epipha­nies. The fact that it takes some­thing as dras­tic as these sit­u­a­tions to affect some peo­ple seems seems a lit­tle odd to me.

Do these peo­ple not think at all in their dai­ly lives? Do they go through one day to the next with­out look­ing at the big pic­ture, with­out see­ing some sort of per­spec­tive?

I think I’m gen­er­al­ly unaf­fect­ed by such extreme events because of the fact that I try to find mean­ing in almost every­thing I expe­ri­ence (risk­ing pre­ten­sion). It ends up being that some­thing like the loss of a favorite shirt can affect me as much as fail­ing an entire uni­ver­si­ty course. I feel as if I learn enough about myself from both events. As a result of this, I some­times change on a day to day basis, although it’s gen­er­al­ly on a minis­cule lev­el and takes a while before it all builds up into any­thing notice­able.

Of course, this also means that very lit­tle ends up sur­pris­ing me. I’m rarely shocked by any­thing, and often feel like my emo­tions have been lev­eled off, per­haps numb or sim­ply accus­tomed to change. I don’t get dras­ti­cal­ly affect­ed any­more, and in turn, can think and act clear­ly accord­ing to my set of log­ic. The only thing that ends up over­com­ing my cere­bral­i­ty is hate.

And love.

Charge

How odd that the themes of my writ­ings have most­ly shift­ed in one direc­tion. I always won­der what peo­ple think of what I say. I would imag­ine that peo­ple think I’m being melo­dra­mat­ic, that I’m look­ing for some sort of pro­tag­o­nis­tic pathos, or that I’m being some pre­ten­tious fuck.

It’s as if a sin­gle inci­dent has shift­ed my mind­set, that I just can’t seem to com­plete­ly get over what has passed. The hurt­ing has stopped, to be sure, but the think­ing isn’t done. I still get inspired by mem­o­ries, ideas, emo­tions, almost any­thing I’ve expe­ri­enced through this.

I was once scared that I would nev­er fall in love again, and I used to be emo­tion­al­ly numb. Perhaps all of this was sim­ply a result of a life of stag­nan­cy, of bore­dom. Now I can write again, I have things to think about, I have emo­tions to expe­ri­ence, I seem to have things to look for­ward to.

Can heart­break be so ben­e­fi­cial? I know that I can feel. I don’t need to force my artis­tic writ­ing. My mind seems to be filled with new end­less thoughts. I can even appre­ci­ate cer­tain music on anoth­er lev­el now. This com­plex­i­ty, this mys­te­ri­ous­ness is so inter­est­ing.

My only wor­ry is that this new vital­i­ty will lev­el off into noth­ing­ness.

The Experience of the First Classification

People in rela­tion­ships can be divid­ed into two cat­e­gories; those who love the self and those who love the oth­er. Every rela­tion­ship is dif­fer­ent, not just in the sense of a dif­fer­ent pair of peo­ple, but also in the idea of the same per­son with a dif­fer­ent girl­friend or boyfriend. Although some­one may be of a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry through one rela­tion­ship, they may fall into the oth­er cat­e­go­ry in anoth­er. Even cross­ing cat­e­gories through the same rela­tion­ship is pos­si­ble, depend­ing on the dynam­ic of a cou­ple.

The lovers of the self care about the oth­er per­son, but only inso­faras their own vest­ed inter­ests are con­cerned. When the desire of this type of lover begins to out­grow what the rela­tion­ship can offer, the bond weak­ens and often breaks. The main con­cern of this type is what they are get­ting out of the rela­tion­ship.

The lovers of the oth­er are lovers in the clas­si­cal sense of the word. These are the peo­ple with an hon­est love, the ones who care most about whether or not the oth­er per­son is hap­py. This type of lover is the one least will­ing to break a rela­tion­ship, the one who is more will­ing to sac­ri­fice or com­pro­mise.

Relationships are based on match­ings of these two types. A rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the self will last as long as there is no con­flict involved. Once a dis­agree­ment is reached, nei­ther par­ty cares enough to make the rela­tion­ship work. On the oth­er hand, a rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the oth­er is the ide­al match, and gen­er­al­ly the longest last­ing. Both peo­ple are com­mit­ted and will­ing to work out any prob­lems that may arise. Usually, the only break in the rela­tion­ship may be from base con­flicts (dis­agree­ment on issues which are too basic to work out or com­pro­mise about, such as adop­tion).

The most com­mon type of match, how­ev­er, is with one lover of the self and one lover of the oth­er. At the end of such a rela­tion­ship one is left unaf­fect­ed while the oth­er is bro­ken-heart­ed, and the end of such a thing, in my expe­ri­ence, is inevitable. In cas­es like this, I’ve found myself on both sides of the coin.

And regret­ting noth­ing of either.

Spiral

A few fac­tors have helped make things eas­i­er in the last lit­tle while, but per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant is the real­iza­tion that almost noth­ing around me has changed. That all cere­bral influ­ences have remained fair­ly sta­t­ic in activ­i­ty.

And I think to myself, “How could I have been so stu­pid? How did I not come to this real­iza­tion soon­er?”

And hav­ing lived a lit­tle more, loved a lot more, every­thing seems brighter.