If you choose someone who does not love you this is the sort of love you must want.
Jo posted a great comment on my profile the other week and it came into my consciousness earlier today. The quote was: “You simply cannot make someone love you if they don’t. You must choose someone who already loves you. If you choose someone who does not love you, this is the sort of love you must want.” Which is an interesting sentiment!
Dawning realisations are fucking hard things to come to. But sometime you just “know” when you think about it hard enough, that someone is just “incapable” of loving you back. At least right this moment. A tear may curve its way down your cheek when you write that statement. But there it is: he doesn’t love you.
It’s not unordinary. It happens ever day. People fall. Others don’t. Some pick us up when we fall. Other’s don’t. Regrettably, sometimes hands are washed clean. Sometimes bridges can not be mended, they are burned. Sometimes you can sit, alone, and ponder the life you could have had, but deep down some place reserved for the soul, you know they don’t love you. You don’t even need to “confront” them; you don’t need to tell them how you feel. Because what is being shown to you is that they cannot love you. They do not have it in their heart. Hell, they do not even miss you. Even if you miss them. They are out there in the world some place, repeating the same mistakes.
But back to the original quote; that is, after all, the point of this blog. “If you choose someone who doesn’t love you this is the sort of love you must want”. Do we sometimes aim for the unattainable, in order to fulfil destructive urges? To inadvertently punish ourselves for wrongs we assume ourselves to have committed? It is, after all, better (and indeed, easier) to love those who already love us? Why do some of us wish on stars? What is the likely outcome? That hopes will be dashed and our attitude to love will slink deeper into the depressive depths, which, once again, we’ll find it hard to pull ourselves up from? Or, are we seeing something quite apart from, what can be considered “the love you must want”? The eternal optimist in me (and yes, we’ve seen quite a lot of her recently) wants to believe in love “across the odds”. I love Romeo and Juliet and those love stories that permeate the time, and where people who are “different” battle to be together; a struggle of some description; the stuff of great tragedies. As Woody Allen might say, life is either a comedy or a tragedy but either have components of both. Why are all my ill fated romances resigned to the “tragic”? Do I crave this burning love for the dramatic? Surely the comedic is just the tragic without the emotional intensity? Someone falling off their bike can be either tragic or comedic (depending on the outcome and how it is dramatised, whose narrative is being played). Just as similarly, life can be comedic or tragic. Maybe to someone else, my life is a comedy. An entertaining pass of the time, to which a coffee is held close to the lips; I do not admonish, nor revolt at this possibility; if you can find humour from my failings, please go ahead and enjoy it; you have my blessing. I know sometimes I laugh at my own revelations. Please feel free to.
If you “choose someone who does not love you”, perhaps that says more about the desire for drama. The need to “overcome” something; the desire to write your own narrative? Do you want the love you cannot have? Or is the love you cannot have the love worth fighting for? It depends, I suppose, on whose narrative is being told. And with which pen the tone is set.
Maybe elsewhere, someone is writing a blog about a girl who does not love him; who keeps him up at night; whose annoying opinions permeate his brain as he tries, with rigour, to sleep at night. It is not outside of the realms of possibility. It is not outside the realm of dramatic possibility, once should say. But life, that’s a whole other kettle of chips? Life does not write itself like great literature. Poets fail. Writers wither on their last masterpiece. Words remain unread. Resolution rarely works in the way of narrative solution. He may fail at the sight of his lover; but it is for a purpose that informs the narrative. Maybe in life, there truly is no “deep ass meaning” to be found. Life is not literature after all. Where we might resign ourselves to analysing the reason for pentameter; the turbulent use of juxtaposition; the arching assonance, the avid alliteration; in life, meaning is less often found. Because no poet turns his head and says, “That’s bullshit, what I meant was…” Oh no, meaning is in the eye, ear and mind of the reader. Once those words hit the page, they leap into the sphere of
“interpretation” and cannot be held back. Those words take on their own soul. They become a life force separate to the meaning the writer ascribed for them.
Life, unfortunately, is not of the same mould. Life is not a series of fictitious events, scrawled together for a premise, a rationale; something to make a grandeo statement that transcends the literary boundary. Life just “is”. And this can be sad. This can be heart breaking. There are no characters. Just people, with feelings, with emotions.
“If you choose someone that does not love you” – yes it may, indeed, be part of your grand narrative; the words and meanings you ascribe to your own life; but it is not all there is. Today may be a sad day. Or it may be a day of no note. Today is full of possibilities. Meaning is only as constrictive as those reading the situation. Others may not ascribe meaning at all. Perhaps there is no “meaning”. Perhaps there just “is”. But “is” is not poetic. “Is” is not the language of a great narrative. “Is” is nothing alone on its own. It needs other words around it to complete it, give it meaning. “Is” is nothing but an adverb. It does nothing. It is nothing, alone. It is not an independent identity. It depends on the words that inform it. So nothing “is”. Not in that sense.
“If you choose someone who does not love you” – this may not be the love you crave, but it may be the catharsis to the narrative. Perhaps there is more to come. Perhaps there is not. Perhaps, perhaps perchance to dream…
footnote: No. 48 @ http://indigirlblog.wordpress.com
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