A year ago, I wrote an article that some people liked – the title was ‘So I guess I will write about love‘, released shortly before Valentine’s.
Before I wrote that one, I really didn’t want to disclose any information about my relationship or dating life.
I didn’t want to write about love, mainly because I didn’t want to give it more power than it already had over me.
So, it’s been over a year since I felt any romantic infatuation. Not even a crush. Not even a little one, where I would want to check their social media uncontrollably.
I had some emotions towards the men I dated last year, but they were not that romantic and didn’t have even an aftertaste of longing or yearning.
The strangers I may have thought of for more than a moment quickly escaped my memory while unattended.
Does it mean I had more healthy time to focus on myself, my goals and my plans for the future?
Well, not really. I mainly worked and tried to figure out where my life was going.
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The void in my heart doesn’t worry me daily but puzzles me in many ways. I ask myself if it is a sign of maturity that I don’t feel thrilled about anyone or if I just had this one love of my life that burnt out through its course and never appeared again. And never will.
I go from one person to another without too much thought given to them again, and it saves me a lot of stress.
But perhaps it means that I only try to protect myself.
After my last break up (which I guess we can call basically a divorce despite us not being formally married), a few friends of mine – male friends of mine – recommended to me familiarising myself with the teachings of stoicism, as a way to deal with my emotions.
I wonder if they wanted to genuinely help or felt uncomfortable with me, feeling too many things. Perhaps it reminded them too much of when they were in the same place and never really forgave themselves for being there.
I already knew quite a lot about stoicism whilst it was being recommended to me, and I agree with what it claims in many ways.
Honestly, there is no reason to get worked up about most things. Everything is temporary in this world, especially our little silly feelings. Being organised, even regimented to a degree is also great most of the time.
Chaos should be tamed by people who are skilled enough to do it; otherwise, it will devour us all.
However, I wonder why those particular men chose this philosophy school out of many.
Ok, I don’t wonder. I already judged them quite severely, and I am pretty sure they are trying to protect themselves from hurt just like what I am doing, having treated all of my ‘romantic’ interests so far pretty superficially post-breakup.
I might be wrong and full of BS, but I know these men are quite lost, just like I am frequently, but with more manly confidence, making the whole play more believable.
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In the last decade, I have had feelings for only three people.
The man who was the love of my life. A man who rejected me quite brutally and I still have to see him more regularly than I wish. And a flawed man who I could probably see myself marrying but who proved himself incapable of love. He keeps trying to maintain the connection, so thankfully there is now an ocean and a rainforest between us.
I feel like each of these men met a different person, and the person I am now cannot relate at all to the yearning I experienced on their account.
I wonder if that means I must completely transform whenever I feel something. Or is it normal that a new person I become, transformed by my life experience, will try to love again, forgetting about the past?
Once again, I worry about the power I would give to romantic love.
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The last thing I wanted to consider is whether I worry about rejection more than love itself.
I am not sure. I haven’t ‘liked’ anyone in so long that sometimes even being rejected sounds exciting. Maybe I want to feel just anything, but at the same time, I feel like there were signs sent to me last year that tried to tell me that being a scorned woman if you have a certain type of personality, can almost damn you.
I met a couple of women in 2023 who had been rejected by their very short-term partners months and months ago, and they were not ready and/or able to let go of the past.
I looked at them with a mix of understanding and dread. I didn’t want to end up like this. I felt bad about everyone I had rejected myself. Still, it was incomparable with the misery of the dimmed light of these beautiful, talented women, who could have given and received love from so many other people.
Instead of the ones who, actually, in their cases, had already moved to other partners.
There was nothing you could have said to them, and I tried*, but I knew it wouldn’t work.
All they could talk about was how much they loved them. How much those men had promised them. How unbelievable it was that they never delivered on those promises.
How important they felt, for a moment, in their eyes, and how that importance had been taken away.
Even if they talked about other topics, I could have felt they wanted to return to speaking about that pain with every breath.
It wasn’t just being rejected; they felt like there was no other way anymore to live – they had to become gravediggers of their own hopes and dreams because of the love that was never fulfilled.
They agreed that with time, they felt better, but never fully recovered.
I pray that one day they will – but what do I know?
This prospect scares me, and I prefer my quiet, stable life (apart from work, back pain, general health, taxes-related problems, existential dreads, and not achieving new PRs in the gym) in every possible way.
But the heart has its desires, and I still, at times, at least, want to be loved. I am scared of what it can do to me, as I have experienced and seen the worst it can do.
I think being scared of love is a great weakness, and I intend to become stronger this year.
I don’t want my soul to remember just fear one day, while I miss out on all the chances to be filled with love.
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*I didn’t recommend stoicism to them, though. I want to propose to the general public that you never do it when someone is in pain, because it does make you sound a little insensitive.
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CROSSROADS
LOUISE GLÜCK
My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young—
love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities.
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised—
My soul has been so fearful, so violent:
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,
not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:
it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.
***
George Herbert “Love”
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
So I did sit and eat.
