I have been thinking lately about the nature of love. PArt of the title of this blog is love and yet I have skirted around the issue for fear of saying out loud what is truly in my heart and on my mind. I have been questioning myself for the past two years on whether or not I can truly love someone else. Love is such a multi-dimensional and complex emotion that I can not simplify it into a black and white issue although my tough outer shell says "I either love you or I don't".
I have been in love exactly three times. The first time was to man I thought for sure was my soulmate. I will call him M.R. I loved him dearly and blindly. I almost married him. We were together for two years. I did everything for him. And when he left me I wanted to die. Never had I felt rejection so keenly. It was a knife to my heart. I begged and pleaded with all the gods in heaven to return him to me. And he did come back. And swore he wanted a life with me. After a while it was me who wanted a life without him. I don't know why. I don't know what happened. All I knew and felt was that all this immense love I felt for him dissapated into the ether, carried away on a hot wind one summer afternoon when I told him it was time to say good-bye. He calmly accepted it and the last memory I have of him is him sitting on the dusty driveway of his home watching me drive away. I have never seen him since. It's been 16 years since that day and I have not regretted the decision I made. That love died.
It was reborn in my husband. Again, that intense, passionate, all-consuming love that I was capable of came bubbling to the surface. A hot, tumultous, whirlwind of love that swept me up in its throes and raced me to marry him. I loved S.B. like no person has ever loved another. That is what all the romance novels state. And it is true. Each and every person feels that his or her love is exactly unique. It is and it isn't. It is the ultimate paradox. Every person feels love differently yet I believe that at the very core love is the same. It is our mortal flesh which twists it into those intense feelings I have experienced. I loved my ex-husband to the point of insanity. To the realm of obssession. And he loved me the same way. We each gave it 100%. And I ask myself "Why then, with so much love to give and to have been given, why then did love die?" It was love but it was a conditional love that knew only limits, restrictions, terms, and sorrow. It was doomed to fail. I believed with all my heart that it was forever. I told myself that no matter what happened this was FOREVER. And I tried with all my might, with all my body and soul and heart to make it forever. And one day I woke up and realized that forever meant death. It was the most horrific experience I have ever gone through, but I realized that in the midst of giving away all my love I had stopped loving myself. Even though my heart was shattered into a thousand shards that pricked and slowly bled me I had to walk away from my marriage and from that love. Now I look at my ex-husband and feel absolutely nothing for him. Open me up and you will not find a shred of that immense love that was once there.
The third person I loved was M.F. But right from the start I knew it was doomed to failure because that was a toxic, poisonous love that came from a very dark place inside of me. A place that wanted revenge for all the hurt, pain, and sorrow I suffered. A black love that was returned by M.F. in a tie that bound us, for three years, into an affair that brought us together, flesh melding with flesh for the sake of satisfying our bodies and lust only and in the knowledge that all we had to do was call the other and we would come running no matter who else was in our lives at the moment. It was such a dark love that it drove me and him to subject another person to our will. After that our lives began to change and I realized that this love would only bring me ruin. And I made the painful decision to leave him behind. He knew it too and he stopped seeking me out for a while until he appeared in my life again a few weeks ago. We may have been together for a few hours but I felt nothing for him. That love now too is dead.
I am afraid to love again. I don't want to love this way anymore. I want to be able to love completely and freely and unconditionally but I don't know how. What does it mean to love unconditionally? I did that with my first two loves. I gave them everything. All they did was take and take. I was left with nothing. Now I don't want to love because it will mean I will give my power away again. I have hardened my heart and I have not allowed anyone access to it although I have had many chances in these last four years to open it up. But I haven't. I have locked it tight. I have deliberately sought out casual relationships based on sex only so that I don't have to love anyone. But I am losing myself again. In trying to keep my love all to myself I am once again dying inside. And each and every day of this past year has been a stab to my heart. I want to be in love. And I want someone to be in love with me. I want to feel that immense power again but I don't know how. I no longer want casual relationships. I no longer want to give my body away. It precious as is all of me and I am learning my true value and worth. Now I need to find someone who sees that value and will give me what I deserve.
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