Can I just hate on love for a minute?
To quote a great Adam Sandler movie,
"Love stinks!"
In fact, why not just put the whole dang song in here?
"Cindy and Scott are newlyweds.
Woopideedoo!
He loves her, but she loves this guy right here.
And he loves somebody else.
You just can't win.
And so it goes until the day you die.
This thing they call love is gonna make you cry.
(I hate you)
I've had the blues, the reds and the pinks,
One thing's for sure:
love stinks?
LOVE STINKS!
yeah, yeah.
Love stinks!"
etc, etc, etc
I was in love once.
Or rather, I fell in love once. I make the distinction because that love, even when it's no longer, shall we say, active, lingers on. I don't think it's the kind of thing you can recover from. That kind of love isn't something that can flit in and out of your life as easily as a new hairstyle or a shade of nail polish. No, that love is more like a stray cat that sits by your kitchen window every day, waiting ever so patiently, watching ever so carefully, and hoping ever so sincerely that you'll notice and take pity on it and give it something to eat. That love is like a pair of eyes in a creepy old painting that are always following you, watching your every move, never fully relinquishing you from its all-seeing gaze. You are never free. For some certain, few lucky people, new love comes along and heals their hearts and gives them a way to move on and get over that other love. For others of us, it's still there. Festering. Hurting. Holding on to every last memory and every last aspect of your life that it can get its greedy hands on. It's so smart and sneaky, knowing when to show up at just the right moment to ruin your entire day. It feeds off of your insecurity and self-doubt and hopelessness until you are nothing more than a pile of thrown-aside laundry, lying there so unassumingly and yet so overwhelmingly present.
And it STINKS.
Love does, that is. Not you-as-the-dirty-pile-of-laundry. Just to clarify.
Is that really love?, I often ask myself. Because if so, it stinks. It really does. (To quote my 4-year-old nephew, "It just sucks!") And it hurts. And sometimes, I'm just tired of hurting. Not trying to get emo here or anything, but it's painful. Life's kinda painful all around, but some moments are just so much more acutely so. Like a vice around your heart, squeezing and squishing until you are left with nothing but a mushy mess of blood and whatever else hearts are made out of.
What are other people's opinions on love? Similar, my friend. Very similar:
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life . . . You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."
-Neil Gaiman
I think my soul hurts today. It just hurts.
"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 your heart to no one, not even to an animal. 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, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."
-C.S. Lewis
So not even my crazy-cat-lady/bunny-back-up plan is going to work, then? Is that what you're telling me?
{Oh, by the way, right after I wrote this, I read Alma 12 (see especially verse 37!) and just thought. Dangit. That plan is not going to work. Sorry, Mr. Lewis}
Except that I never feel like we're all together in that. Isn't that the point?
Anyway. Just thought I'd share. Sometimes I really hate love.
2 comments:
i've been feeling exactly the same way lately. (That's giving a pretty liberal time frame to the word "lately.") Maybe we can go feel alone together in Ireland?
I don't know why but I think this is one of the most beautiful posts you have written. It's so raw and true. Sometimes it is not the love we crave from another human being that will heal us; that is only the Savior's doing. Trust me when I say heartache and loneliness is not only for the unwed or single souls. But being in love can help erase those memories of loss. I hope you can first heal and then find everlasting love. :)
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