Once in a while, I don't sleep. I lie there thinking thoughts that are better left un-thought. Tonight I decided I was going to think of the cruelest thing that exists on the earth. War, Poverty, Apathy, Famine. Pol Pot, Pinochet, Milošević, Nazis. Greed, Hatred, Torture, Disease. I thought of it all. Then in my addlepated mind I decided that the cruelest thing on earth today is Love.
All the other things I mentioned are done out of self-serving motives, but love: love is cruelest of all. Love destroys us piece by piece and seems so gleefully to enjoy the journey. Imagine a mother in a country dying of famine...the mother loves her child but has to watch that child die simply because there is nothing she can do. It is not the lack of food that does her in, it is her Love that destroys her.
Hatred kills the physical body, but love kills bits of us and we are expected to keep on living with scar on top of scar on top of scar and never find reprieve in the quietness of death that simple hatred can bring. Think of disease as it ravages a loved one's body. The disease is not malicious, its motive is quite simple. Then think of the horrors in life that are done in the name of love. What are the motives then?
Death will wrench a loved one out of our sight but it is our love for that person that continues to torture us in their absence. Our love for them causes us to shed tears. It is not the death we mourn, but the Love.
Someone offers us Love and we won't accept it. Because we know that love equals pain. Here are some questions for you: Why do we spend so much time trying to get the people we love to hate us as much as we hate ourselves? Why can't we accept that someone loving us RIGHT NOW gives us a clean slate? Who doesn't want a new starting place? But instead of accepting it and embracing it we feel we must "confess" to the one who loves us all of our past wrongs so that they too will look at us with the loathing we feel for ourselves. Even if we find someone truly magnanimous, will we accept it? No. We hate ourselves too much to accept that anyone could possibly love us and we sabotage ourselves.
Love binds us to places we don't want to be. Love sneaks up when we don't want it. It tears us down when we thought we couldn't get any lower. We cry over Love and think we're done only to discover that the thing we've cried over can hurt us in new and exciting ways over and over and over again--always thinking of new tactics; disguising itself so we let it in again only to have it rip us to shreds devouring the same scars it caused the first time. We think we've no more tears left to shed, but Love will prove us wrong and the floodgates will open and our faces will soak in the only true product of Love.
I would really like to sleep right now. I would really like to escape into the oblivion of unconsciousness. But my heart is broken and Love is cruelly keeping me awake because Love loves nothing more than watching us bathe in sorrows it brings.
5 comments:
Hm. A verse from Terry Pratchett the Divine comes to mind: He writes of musicians who compose beautiful melodies but, as time passes, they slowly go deaf until the time arrives that they cannot hear the music they compose. Pratchett notes that this is what some gods (with a small g) would regard as a great joke, but adds that the joke is on them, because the deafness doesn't stop the composer from hearing the music, but stops him or her from hearing the distractions. Some love may be cruel, but most of it, in my experience, prevents me from noting the distractions . . .
You're lucky.
These words are true. It's the harsh reality. But then it makes me wonder if life would be better if love didn't even exist. Would we be better off? Something tells me that we wouldn't ... but I don't know.
Also, I think I can read between the lines...and I'm sorry.
Maaike. I love you and hope that someday you will be able to find happiness. Your happiness is out there. It really is. You just have to find it. I truly think that YOU are worth the effort.
Mouse, my rant about love is not your fault. This is a lifetime of crappy experiences with love. No need to apologize...I know that I am important to you.
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