the endless pursuit finally ends
For almost as long as I can clearly remember, I've been addicted -- maybe even obsessed -- with love. Thoughts of it, where to acquire it, and the state of love itself. I've been consumed by it, I've been overwhelmed with elation by it, and I've drowned in incredible sorrow and anxiety because of it. This is good thing and a bad thing.
For one, I've always sort of felt that it was a vital part of living and growing up, heartbreak and all. To expose and surrender yourself to someone completely, to offer yourself unconditionally to someone, to give someone the ability to complete or destroy your life based on a simple "yes" or "no" answer was something I valued greatly. It was like a rite of passage for me, one that I couldn't explain or understand, but needed to experience in order to consider myself a man. Rejections, explanations that end in "I just want to be friends", or desertions for others were like battle-scars -- incredibly painful in the moment, but something to look back on with pride later on. "I survived that!" I would tell myself stoically, yearning for the next profoundly emotional experience that could overtake me.
Things changed, though, as I left my teens and entered my twenties. Blind optimism was replaced with lingering pessimism. Innocence was replaced with hesitant pragmatism. Enthusiasm was replaced with bitterness. I became jaded. I kept going through the motions, expecting to feel the same disabling passion wash over me, to reassure me that there was a reason behind constantly pursuing it. But that passion never came. I could lie to myself and convince myself it was there, but only briefly. I stopped getting hurt. I hurt others with my inability to care. Love was my drug, and I'd built up quite a tolerance.
For the past few years, that's where I was. Trying desperately to fill a void. Trying to understand that void; where it came from, why it's so difficult to fill. I questioned my innocence. Then my ability to feel. Then, finally, my sanity.
Then something interesting happened. Through a certain series of events that I won't go into, life got very hard. Incredibly hard. So hard that, aside from losing interest in love, I lost the ability to even think about it for more than a few fleeting minutes. I had to focus on more important things. Things like having a place to live that wasn't under a bridge. Like having something to eat. Like pulling myself out of destitution. Love fell on the back-burner -- in part because I was tired of it, but mostly because it needed to. You simply cannot be sleeping in the woods, applying for jobs at the library, eating canned food straight from the can, and daydreaming about being in love at the same time. When you're situation is that desperate, you don't daydream about holding hands, kissing, and sharing secrets intimately -- you daydream about warm meals, having a modest job, and sleeping in anything more comfortable than a sleeping bag.
By the time I pulled myself out of that situation, I noticed something strange. I still wasn't thinking about love.
I'd meet a girl, hit it off, and forget about it completely. I'd be at a restaurant, meet eyes with someone attractive, and think "she seems nice," then finish my meal and leave without a second thought. Memories of ex's and relationships-that-could've-been weren't haunting me anymore.
Eventually I found myself happy again. Not content. Not satisfied. But I found myself able to look on the bright side of things. I found joy in my friends. I found joy in making music. I found joy in working towards my goals. I found joy in myself. For quite possibly the first time in my life, I was able to make myself happy, rather than relying on someone else for my happiness. I started to get comfortable with myself. I started to feel like myself again, for the first time in forever. I became confident in who I was, what I was able to do, what I was able to give. My standards and morals not only rose, but became much more defined.
And now, here I am. I've had a few pursuits. I've been let down. I've been sad. But those situations developed naturally -- not out of some desperately forceful attempt at experiencing love. And love wasn't there anyway. And the sadness that came after was brief and reassuring, rather than crippling and hopeless. Like "See, you can still feel! And look, the world isn't ending either!" It was refreshing.
I think that's how it's supposed to be. For me, anyway. I can't speak for others. But for me, I think this is how love is supposed to be achieved. This is the best possible path leading to love -- a path that doesn't exist at all. It's not supposed to be a constant search. It's supposed to be something that occurs, or has the possibility to occur, and I'm just supposed to let it play out and see what happens.
Human beings are delicately emotional creatures. We can't always expect others to feel the same, do what we want them to do, or choose to go down the same road we want to go down. Even if they do feel the same, we can't expect them to act accordingly. We are unfathomably complex. All we can do is try to understand, offer respect, and continue to try to grow on our own.
