A stupid thing called love.

How many times do you have to get hurt to finally understand love?

I am writing this article after a break-up. A bad one. Not a messy one. But a bad one. One where I found out, that the guy I was dating was married and had two kids. Yes, he never told me and lied about being single from the day I met him.

How do such terrible people exist in this world? And the worst part is, how do they live with themselves after hurting honest people?

Was it my fault to have fallen in love? To have felt love? I loathe it now. I loathe him now. I loathe that feeling and want to puke it out. It’s like eating an amazing meal and then realizing that the food was actually spoilt. The deception and the lies.

That good, wholesome feeling turns against you in seconds and it’s piercing your heart like a dagger. And somehow you feel like you’re doing it to yourself by trusting such people out there. You’re on a sinking ship, but your hands and legs are frozen. Just frozen. So, you’re just going down with it, in a position of hopelessness and helplessness. Your heart sinks and no matter what you do for a while, trying to do things to make you feel better don’t really help. Because the best way to get over something is to go through the feeling entirely, sit with it, mope in it, allow it to just be in you, so it becomes completely familiar and then slowly starts disappearing.

So, I write this article in a bit of a negative tonality, but not a hopeless one. And considering what I’ve been through, I think that’s very noble of me.

Within the chaos of our shame, disappointment and rage, there is meaning, and within that meaning, there is a possibility of rescue. The lurking dream in all of us is that we will someday confess to all our suffering, and that we might at some point find someone who will listen to us, who will not turn away from us in our ugliest of revelations.

Love is a beautiful thing. You are in a bubble that allows you to step out of reality and into a world of compassion and passion- Enough compassion to make us feel safe within our broken needs, enough wisdom to hold on to hope and enough passion to keep the fire burning.

Love is the feeling we have for someone whom we care about and hold in high regard. I’ve realized if any one of these aspects disappear, you are no longer in love. It has happened to me many times. Most of the time, the people I care about would do something that would make me lose respect for them and the love would disappear. It would turn into a feeling of being deceived actually. Were they pretending all this time? How did I not see this? Was I blinded? Was a I stupid?

Love can be platonic, it can be superficial, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leveraged by generosity, nourished by humor, loaded with promises and commitment that we may or may not want to keep.

The best thing you can do in life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.

Nobody is afraid of love; they are afraid of all the junk yoked to it. And some people are convinced that withholding that one tiny word from someone they think they love, will shield them from that junk. But it won’t. We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright — to elucidate the nature of our affection, when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying.

It is also not the word ‘love’ itself; it is the intent and meaning behind the word. The actions you put into play to show love.

A proclamation of love is not inherently loaded with promises and commitments that are highly fragile and easily broken. Many seem to think so. ‘I love you’ can mean — you’re groovy and beautiful and I am going to do everything in my power to be your partner for the rest of my life. It can mean ‘I think you’re groovy and beautiful but I’m in transition right now, so let’s go easy on our promises and take it as it comes’. It can mean ‘I think you’re groovy and beautiful, but I’m not interested in a commitment with you, now or probably ever, no matter how groovy or beautiful you continue to be.’

We all have been taught to think that love is some everlasting, hugely gratifying, immensely healing and wholesome feeling. That’s not love. It’s just the chemicals in your brain after you eat ice cream or have sex. If we ever think love is this mythical, then the only place you can find it is in books and movies. So, get ready to be lonely forever. But if you actually understand that the nature of love is abstract and that you can be fleetingly in love, hugely in love, sporadically in love or partially in love, let me tell you friend, that it is a way more realistic way of looking at daily life, and the sum of days that make up our stupid, stupid being.

So, would you rather live your life accepting this fact and loving things and people more frequently, or are you going to starve yourself of that feeling and keep it to yourself till you feel you can share it with your non-existent-mythical — the one?

The whole point is, you have to feel these feelings, even if they are a ‘partial, abstract, sort of, maybe’ - kind of feeling and you have to say the words. You don’t have to have the whole cone of chocolate ice cream to say that it tastes good. Even a few spoons of it can do it for you. You can define the terms of it later.

Withholding yourself from those feelings or not saying those words in fear or whatever reason, would distort your reality, so don’t be strategic or coy. That’s for jackasses.

Be brave. Be authentic.

Practice saying the word ‘love’ to the people whom you love, so when it matters the most to say it, you will. We’re all going to die someday, so hit the iron bell like its dinner time! — from Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed.

It pains me to write this article, because I am a believer of that mythical human who will sweep me off my feet and with whom I would feel protected and confident, yet, sensitive and vulnerable and to whom I could give the whole of my goodness and commitment to. Every guy has managed to piss me off within a week. And if that keeps happening, a day of reckoning comes from my side. But as I said, love is abstract.

So now I have a choice — burn photos of this guy who broke my heart, send hate messages to him, do some weird ass healing ritual and read some self-help books about sappy self-love or make peace with it and realize that for a fleeting period of time when things did feel real, that feeling was still legitimate in spite of the turn of events.

I think I’d go for the second. And then maybe next week we can go to his house with a chain saw. Who’s with me? Here! Here!