Friday, October 12, 2007

Love


Love.

The most basic need a human being has.

Love is everywhere, surrounding us like the very air we breathe.

And yet, it seems, so very hard to find. Or at least pretty difficult to keep around in a somewhat permanent sense.

No, I'm not talking about the kind of eternal love you feel for your family, or your friends, or perhaps your favorite Aspen tree out in the yard.

I mean the romantic kind of love, that kind of love which makes you catch your breath as your heart skips a beat.

Love that causes you to forget to eat when you're hungry.

Love that prompts you to imagine a special someone when you hear a certain song on your iPod.

Love that makes you sigh as you rest your head on your buckwheat-hull pillow at night.

Love that causes you to gaze up at the moon and the stars, and to think of the wonder of it all.

What happens to us when we fall in love? An endorphin rush? Something more? A collision of molecules? A melding of minds? A fusion of souls?

And what happens to us when we lose that love? Do we lose a piece of ourselves? What if a big enough piece of us will not be left to keep going? What happens then? Do we fade away into nothingness? Do we wander around like an empty shell of a person, mumbling to ourselves? Or do we pretend like we're okay, that we don't really need love to feel like a human?

I have lost love before. More times than I would like to admit. Sometimes I console myself, thinking "it must not have been REAL love, since it didn't last...." But I'm not fooled. I can't forget.

This time when I lost love, I think I feel it even more deeply than the last time I lost love. This time is different. This time, love just disappeared. This was not simple love. This was complicated love. The kind where we had "Implied Dates" and "Plans for the Future". Plans like going to Asheville for a winter holiday. And going camping at Rocky Knob. One day he called and wanted to meet me for dinner. I had already agreed to meet a girlfriend of mine that evening for dinner, so I politely declined. "I love you," we said to one another. I haven't heard from him since then. I have called. I have texted. I have emailed. Not like a crazy woman, mind you, but just a couple of times over the last month. My mother suggested I check the obituaries in the newspaper. "What," I asked? "Are you nuts?!" The funny thing is, I actually did. Every day since that day, I have pulled out the obituary pages and I have looked, just to make sure.

Yes, this time is different. This time, I have no sense of closure. Nothing really culminated into "The End". So, here I am. Sipping my coffee. The newspaper lies open, waiting for me to read it. This time, I reach for the comics instead of the obituaries.

No comments: