Today I met an old friend whom I hadn’t seen for quite a while, and he was impatient to give me his news. But even before he had a chance to say anything, I guessed it: he was in love. It doesn’t take a genius to see when one is in love. You can tell just by the intensity of light those folks are emanating from within. It’s the very light that blinds them and unnerves or nauseates everyone around them.
He told me with much enthusiasm that life is not worth living unless one is in love. Everyone should be in love. It is so exhilarating, uplifting, inspiring, thrilling… It’s the strongest natural high one can get.
LOVE IS A DRUG.
Yeah, I thought, but in my case falling in love is not easy to do. It takes forever to fall in love. And, what’s more disturbing, it takes even longer than that to fall out of it. And it’s this “falling out” part that scares me. “Falling out?” My friend teased me, “Why would anyone in their right mind do something like that?”
We laughed and I could see that all that light he was bursting with was blinding him, making it impossible to understand where I was coming from. As anyone “in their right mind” who has ever been in love, he was confident that his love is special, different, beyond any comparison. I guess that’s only natural, as the first thing love does upon entering into one’s system, is to release its venom that instantly immunizes one from their “right mind”. I wondered if that was a good or a bad thing. I wondered how long it would last. I wondered if it was worth it. He seemed to be in a good place; in a place so far up from which it was impossible to see my gloomy perspective. Even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, I couldn’t pop his bubble.
LOVE IS BLIND.
And it’s this very quality that eventually gets the better of the best of us. Why is it so difficult to see clearly when you are in love? It seems to me that being in love is like being in the dark. In order to see what’s in front of you, you need light or you are bound to lose your way. And once you lose your way, you’ve lost, period.
Recuperating sight entails falling out of love. It is a gradual and painful process. For once the light pours in, it is unstoppable. And the vision itself is unforgiving. You can’t see just a little. Once you start to see, you see it all; there are no veils of romance or censorship of ideals to soften the blow. Imagination does not stand a chance when confronted with the crudeness of reality. And every time a new picture enters your vision, it hits you full force with the sole implication of its existence. And you can’t help but wonder, “How could I have been so blind? How could I have denied something so undeniable for so long?” Yes, well…
LOVE IS A MYSTERY.
The best you can hope for when in love is that it will be over before you fall out of love.
There is just one thing worse than losing love, and that’s losing faith in love.
4 thoughts on “Love is”
Hah!! Well put. I think I lost my faith so quite long ago… don’t know which relationship it was though… love IS a mystery! 😉
disillusion disillusion disillusion is all around me. How does one rise above disillusion… and should one, to be happier for a while? Or can such a thing as disillusion lead one to actually fall in love?!
What a beautiful passage. I imagine it must be even harder to fall out of love when the other is still in love with you.
What a mystery indeed!
Indeed, you seem to know all about it.
I can´t claim to know anything about it at all. We seem to stumble upon and stumble though these lives without really knowing what´s going on- unless of course we are lucky enough to have the time to stop for a while and take stock of what has actually happened- falling truly in love for example- a once in a lifetime(s) gift.