Love Letters #14

18.09.1994

Falling in love is like descending into madness. The first few days are euphoric. Everything they do or say is special and fabulous, melting your heart into mush and making your knees tremble with the sheer power of their words, their voice. Then the twisting knife of jealousy and fear begins to pry at the very top layer of your skin, shaving off small translucent curls. Barely noticeable in the beginning, obscured by the encompassing passion of hormones and intoxication. Hormones, I think, can be like drugs, if administered in large enough doses.

Soon the knife digs in deeper and the Alices and Katies and Corals of the world rear their pretty heads and tinkly voices, wreaking havoc in the oh so perfect system.

It’s not supposed to be like this. It’s not, it’s not. Every time I think about him my whole body shifts, as though it is leaving this realm of reality and floating a little higher. Everything is a little brighter. Old crushes are now pale and unappealing, mere fragments of memory on the edge of this brilliant sphere in which I now hang.

Falling in love is painful.

I am not too young to understand it. This is love. This all encompassing passion. This drive to do things I have never done before. This mad hunger pushing me outside my comfort zone. The whole world is small and insignificant. Nothing matters.

Until it feels like your whole world is shaken and pulled from under your feet like a rug, and you are displaced and the fall when it comes is hard and harsh and sudden, aftershock reverberating around your skull like a metal stinging wasp.

Who is Alice? WHO IS SHE? I thought you loved me. I thought this was love. I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME.

Lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, too numb to cry. Wanting to scream and scream but knowing it won’t solve anything, won’t take the pain away.

‘You’ll get hurt,’ they tell me, ‘you don’t know what you are doing. Stay away from him, you don’t understand love.’

I fell in love. You don’t understand, you adults with experience, that I need to experience this for myself. I am young and naive and too trusting, but this feeling is too powerful for me to ignore. You should know this. I can’t stay away. It is physically impossible. My intuition doesn’t know any better.

And when all your prophecies come true why do you say ‘I told you so.’?

Just hold me and tell me this is a lesson to learn from, like you learned yours. I know you want to keep me away from the pain that you know, but how will I learn until I have experienced the same pain? How will I know, like you know, if I haven’t been heartbroken.

‘Ah, young love.’

That is what they say. Because they know.

Now I am like you. I want to protect my baby from being hurt, from falling in love and chasing that which is bad for her heart and soul. I want to prevent her from feeling like she has been seared open from inside. Like I was. My little baby with the torn hole in her chest.

Now I look back I wish they had dragged me away from him. I wish they had chained me to my room, rather than let me be foolish and have my happiness and sanity snatched away from me so.

They did, though. Didn’t they. I escaped and did it all in secret anyway. All I have now are thorny memories and bitter regret.

Falling in love is like descending into madness, because when you escape its frenzied clutches, you see everything clearly again. You see situations for what they were. You see people for the selfish manipulators they always were to you. Stark reality pierces you from every direction like poisoned arrows, and you wonder, where was I all those months? Why didn’t I see this from the very beginning.

‘Ah, young love,’ they should say, ‘the drug that clouds your judgement and steals your sanity.’

Signed,

L.P.

 

One Sided Love

Have you ever felt that a platonic love was one sided?

That you spend hours on phone conversations with a friend, who calls everytime calamity falls, and you console and cajole, reassure and listen, and she goes away happier, lighter, but you are left with a small wilting rose in your heart?

I feel that way. I won’t say who it is. I see friends and friendships blossoming all around me, and I do know what it feels to be in such a friendship, but I fear this one isn’t one such friendship.

This one is one sided. I am not aiming to sound like an egotistical hippo when I say this, but I don’t return her love.

We met under odd circumstances. We still love to tell the funny tale of our meeting. It was one that gave me hope and happiness. It consoled me, that I was not a lost soul. However as time passed and our acquaintance bloomed into friendship, I began to feel more lost than ever.

We met a lot and we talked about things, and she needed to get a lot off her chest. She told me all about her troubles. There were a lot of them. Time passed some more.

Her troubles only got worse. Lately we seem to only be talking of her troubles. Sometimes I have troubles, but she never ever hears about them, because when she asks about my life, and I begin to tell her, she launches into a discussion about another problem relating to mine, and soon enough, I find myself nodding sympathetically and speaking soothingly.

“I love you” she says, laughingly, when we are out having gelato, “You’re always here for me. What would I do without you!?”

But I don’t love her. I can do very well without her. This is a sad and horrible thing for me to say, I know it. However I can’t help what I feel. She is not there for me. I can’t connect with her. She doesn’t understand me, and I don’t feel as though I completely understand her either.

I feel as though she talks a great deal but only very little does she have to say. I might be guilty of the same thing, I don’t know. I do know, however, that I am getting tired of lying.

“I miss you”, she said to me in a text the other day, “We really should meet soon!”

I don’t miss her at all.

When I laugh with her, I am forcing myself. I force myself to smile. I force myself to see her. I force myself I force myself I force myself.

I don’t know why. I do try. I think friendship should be more than just listening to somebody’s problems. It should be about connecting and understanding each other equally. It should be about enjoying another person’s company, and laughing together about things we both find funny.

This friend and I, have senses of humour that are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The things she finds funny are things I find smile-worthy, she doesn’t understand my jokes, and I don’t understand hers.

We are so different, how are we friends? We have nothing in common.

I expect that what I am trying to say is that there is nothing wrong with us knowing each other and liking each other, but I wouldn’t go so far as to tell her I love her and I value her presence in my life. While I do make time for her, and I don’t resent that at all, I feel as though I am in a shell desperately trying to get out, to express myself, but our conversations never allow it.

I think I made a friend out of desperation, because it is not easy for me to make them. I tried. I tried so hard. But this is a one sided love.