Pain, love & heartbreak
We don’t get to choose who we love in this world. We make decisions which lead to universities and jobs and buying houses, but love… love isn’t something we can control. Love has the capacity to make us fly, to make us soar high in the sky, away from the harsh realities of this world. But love is also pain. A forceful hand around my heart, pulling me this way and that way, without mercy or forgiveness or humanity. I love Love, and I can’t imagine my life without it, but Eros’ arrows keep hitting me over and over again and I don’t know how much longer I can sustain the wounds. It’s hard.
It’s harder that it seems in films. Harder than it seems when you are a mere child, watching the couple in the apartments opposite yours make dinner each night, one chopping, the other stirring. They cook, fold laundry, simply talk, before pulling down the shutters and enclosing themselves in for the night, completely at ease with each other. They have no need for the rest of the world because they have each other. But now, it seems like their relationship is teetering in the wind. Their house still flies in the clouds above, but the balloons have all popped, safe one; one thin, fragile balloon is all that’s left, anchoring them down. One more sharp gust of wind, and the house will come crashing down. As a society, we root for the sunshine, we pray for Boreas to help them, we would give anything to save them. But is it within our power to save them? Is there anything we can do? Or are we simply helpless spectators, hopeless romantics stranded in a world where we don’t belong? All we can do, it seems, is watch. We watch the arguments and the sniping getting worse and worse until it feels like normality. We are right to next to them, but we are so far away. We want to save them, but we also want out. When will it stop? When will Eros move on to torturing the next poor soul? Cruel as that thought is, his manipulation is far crueller.
I crave his presence in my life, but at the same time I loathe it. For Eros controls my actions and my thoughts and my dreams. He’s even in my dreams, worming his way into my imagination until I don’t know what’s real or not. Those amongst us who are targeted by him, are both the blessed and the cursed. The idea of going through life without him, however, is as scary as being all-consumed by it. I need Eros in my life, but to what extent am I willing to sacrifice my sanity for his beautiful, painful touch. Will I be brave like Psyche, or will I flee?
