I was a lover of time, and once she was mine
I was a lover, indeed, I was covered in weed
Cried when she should and she laughed when she could
Well, closer to God is the one who's in love
And I walk away, 'cause i can...
Loving is fine if it's not in your mind
But I've fucked it up now, too many times.
-Damien Rice
I used to be in love with love. The more I learn about people though, the more curious I become about why such a singular, small word is used to describe such a wide range of emotion. How can four letters equally sum up how I feel about my parents, siblings, dog, best friend and lover? (I hesitate to use that word in this context, but my internal thesaurus is temporarily out of order.) The more I think about it, the more cynical I become; therefore, I have decided to fall out of love with love.
I'm falling out of love with a lot of things in the process. For a while (a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks at best) I was optimistic. For a while I just wanted to do what felt right; but maybe what feels right in one moment, doesn't feel so right in the next. And in that next moment, letting go of what I thought was right isn't as easy as it should be. After all, if I'm just doing something for the sheer thrill of doing it, shouldn't I be able to move on after the fact, when the thrill wears off? Apparently not. Apparently, playing the game isn't as easy as it used to be, before I knew that I could feel. So, not only am I falling out of love with love, I'm falling out of love with the game (which is the only thing close to emotion that I used to know). I'm also falling out of love with the idea of certain people, and in turn, falling out of love with these said people. It's not that I was ever "in love," in the greater sense of the word, with anybody in the first place. The problem is, I'm falling out of love with my current situation--with my words and my actions and my decisions and the people in my life. I'm falling out of love with my life. (I'm writing again, for god's sake--never a good sign.)
This falling out of love with my life is not a suicidal type--don't get me wrong. I'm not depressed (that would require feeling). I hesitate to use the word numb, but maybe that's how I feel. (Can one feel numb? That's kind of a questionable oxymoron.) Mostly I feel like I'm surrounded by a huge void, like my non-feeling isn't coming from inside but from without, like I'm being suffocated. The worst part is I'm being suffocated by my own choices, and I continue to stifle myself more and more every day, because I can't just forget about these choices. (In case you didn't get it, said choices are actually real live human beings. Funny, right?)
With a few exceptions, most spurred on by anger or stress, not genuine sadness, I haven't cried in a long time, until today.
I clearly don't know how to handle genuine emotion. As Damien says, "This isn't love, this is porn."