One
of my all-time favorite songs is "Say Yes" by Elliott Smith. It's
this lyric that gets me, it just gets me every time I listen to it: "I'm
in love with the world/ Through the eyes of a girl/ Who's around the morning
after". It just spoke so much to me. And I thought it was all I really
wanted.
But it's not.
Life can be so cruel sometimes. You labor through life, feeling sorry for yourself, spending miserably lonely weekends alone, hoping to meet someone who loves you. And then you do. You know you love that person, and you think that person, at the very least, has feelings for you. But that person, for various [very good] reasons, cannot overtly reciprocate. And then what do you do?
You start thinking. You've always thought a lot. But this time, you think maybe too much. You work yourself into a frenzy. You're like a dog chasing its own tail, thinking in circles, round and round, spiraling ever further along the downward spiral. Then one day, something changes. It just changes without warning. It's like a string, that's pulled taut, tauter, even tauter, and then all of sudden it snaps. It breaks. And once broken, it can never be the same again.
That's how it was. I thought. I looked at it this way, I looked at it that way, I looked at it every which way except the way it eventually played out. I came to certain conclusions, some of which true, some of which mistaken.
C'est la vie, eh?
But that helped. It snapped me out of the stupor of infatuation that often overlaps with the euphoria of romantic love. As I began evaluating my options and my choices again, I finally began to observe. To watch. To examine. To consider. To analyze. I used to look, but I did not see. Now I saw.
And what I saw, I did not expect. More importantly, I did not want.
For the first time in my life, I understood what it was like to break up with someone, as opposed to being broken up with. And for the first time in my life, I realized what a good, responsible, giving, caring dump-ee I had been previously. That I had made it easy for others to leave, to walk away, with as little hurt as I could engineer. Myself? Maybe this is a self-glorifying, self-serving comment, but I felt and I still feel as if I kept everything to myself, held everything in. For the sake of the other person. [Perhaps tellingly, when I wrote the first sentence in this paragraph, I unconsciously wrote "love" instead of "life". What does that say? I don't know. But I'm sure it says something.]
I discovered that it could be as difficult and painful to break up with someone, as it is to be broken up with. If the other party does not want to break up, wants to hold on, regrets choices made and paths taken and wants a second chance, it takes a whole lot of steel and determination to carry it through. Steel and determination, unfortunately, which I do not have enough of.
I used to think I could be tough if I needed to be. Now, I know that at the very least, that is simply not true if the other person is a crying human being in lots and lots of pain.
And I found myself learning about love. What love is. The nature of love. People you love. Why you love them. I realized that in my life, of all the people I have ever been involved with there will be only one that I’ll truly, truly regret.
One person that I wish I had been nicer to, cared more for and about, been more tender to, been more understanding, patient, and sensitive.
One person, who I knew was in another relationship and accepted it.
But it's not.
Life can be so cruel sometimes. You labor through life, feeling sorry for yourself, spending miserably lonely weekends alone, hoping to meet someone who loves you. And then you do. You know you love that person, and you think that person, at the very least, has feelings for you. But that person, for various [very good] reasons, cannot overtly reciprocate. And then what do you do?
You start thinking. You've always thought a lot. But this time, you think maybe too much. You work yourself into a frenzy. You're like a dog chasing its own tail, thinking in circles, round and round, spiraling ever further along the downward spiral. Then one day, something changes. It just changes without warning. It's like a string, that's pulled taut, tauter, even tauter, and then all of sudden it snaps. It breaks. And once broken, it can never be the same again.
That's how it was. I thought. I looked at it this way, I looked at it that way, I looked at it every which way except the way it eventually played out. I came to certain conclusions, some of which true, some of which mistaken.
C'est la vie, eh?
But that helped. It snapped me out of the stupor of infatuation that often overlaps with the euphoria of romantic love. As I began evaluating my options and my choices again, I finally began to observe. To watch. To examine. To consider. To analyze. I used to look, but I did not see. Now I saw.
And what I saw, I did not expect. More importantly, I did not want.
For the first time in my life, I understood what it was like to break up with someone, as opposed to being broken up with. And for the first time in my life, I realized what a good, responsible, giving, caring dump-ee I had been previously. That I had made it easy for others to leave, to walk away, with as little hurt as I could engineer. Myself? Maybe this is a self-glorifying, self-serving comment, but I felt and I still feel as if I kept everything to myself, held everything in. For the sake of the other person. [Perhaps tellingly, when I wrote the first sentence in this paragraph, I unconsciously wrote "love" instead of "life". What does that say? I don't know. But I'm sure it says something.]
I discovered that it could be as difficult and painful to break up with someone, as it is to be broken up with. If the other party does not want to break up, wants to hold on, regrets choices made and paths taken and wants a second chance, it takes a whole lot of steel and determination to carry it through. Steel and determination, unfortunately, which I do not have enough of.
I used to think I could be tough if I needed to be. Now, I know that at the very least, that is simply not true if the other person is a crying human being in lots and lots of pain.
And I found myself learning about love. What love is. The nature of love. People you love. Why you love them. I realized that in my life, of all the people I have ever been involved with there will be only one that I’ll truly, truly regret.
One person that I wish I had been nicer to, cared more for and about, been more tender to, been more understanding, patient, and sensitive.
One person, who I knew was in another relationship and accepted it.
One
person, who has another love. A wife.
Everything hurts. Sometimes, it all blends into a blur of confused pain, a haze of conflicting emotions. Guilt. Hurt. Disappointment. Regret. Tenderness. Friendship. Compassion. Fear. But always lurking, always undergirding everything, omnipresent everywhere, there is love.
To those who are in love, I envy you. To those who are not in love, I empathize with you. And to those who are in a world of hurt, I am there with you.
Everything hurts. Sometimes, it all blends into a blur of confused pain, a haze of conflicting emotions. Guilt. Hurt. Disappointment. Regret. Tenderness. Friendship. Compassion. Fear. But always lurking, always undergirding everything, omnipresent everywhere, there is love.
To those who are in love, I envy you. To those who are not in love, I empathize with you. And to those who are in a world of hurt, I am there with you.
