Love in the time of...

      Regularly I would refuse to be another blogger to post on the more generic topic of love.  Be another person ranting about the overuse of the word, the hollowness and lack of meaning behind it. Everyone knows that. We all use the word when we don't mean it, anyway. Only no one in this generation uses an elastic band on our wrist, ready to snap against ourselves if we misspeak.  A sharp pain for the word love--punishment for something akin to swearing--maybe then we'd all get the idea.

      I am not going to tell you what love is. No one can tell you what love is. You have to feel it. I may not yet know what love is, but I sure as hell know what the lack of it feels like. The lack of love makes up the difference between want and need, only because love is simultaneously the most selfish and martyred aspect of the living condition. There is a myth that in the beginning of time, people had four legs, four arms, and two heads. Lightning struck and split us all in two, and for the rest of our lives now we go in search of our other half.

     Many, many people have chastised me for my loneliness. It seems counter-productive to me, but nonetheless it happens. I do not blame them. They tell me that I shouldn't feel so starved for love, shouldn't be desperate for a taste of it. After all, I am surrounded by friends and family. I should take comfort in them to appease my loneliness. In response, I usually say nothing. What I am thinking, though, is that yes, my friends and family have contributed to who I am, made me all that I can be... but that doesn't stop me pining for my other half. If all that I have now accounts for only half of what I am, then no amount of friends or family can fill the love-lack that I still feel so strongly. Selfish and needy? I hunger for something I would gladly go without if it meant my other half would be happy. Love: the contradiction.

     The word is lost in clichés. Contrary to popular belief, I do not crave only the sugar sweet aspects of love. I don't only want the reverent moonlit nights, the sweet kisses of summer rain on hot, dry skin. I don't only live for the spooning and cuddling, the late night chats that stretch into the early morning. The sex.

     I need Calypso and Davy Jones. A love so strong that for the absence of it to be possible, a heart needs to be ripped from the chest. A love as unpredictable as the sea itself; one minute calm and even, the next minute raging so viciously you can't hope for survivors. Love is the water that caresses you and drowns you, the fire that warms and burns you. Consumes you. I want an end to the neutrality, to the endless beach of nothingness, the clean white sand that everybody loves so much. All I see is desert ahead of me, with love, like a mirage in the distance.

      Which is so telling isn't it? You can't search for love. The minute you think you spot it it vanishes, like something in your periphery. It just has to appear before you, smack you in the face when you're not paying attention. Cruel we should have to wait so long, beautiful when it happens. No more than I can help how lonely I feel can I help how much I hope. I am optimistic. Always.

      I love my friends. I love my family. I don't need "more", I need this lack to disappear. Eventually, when I have (for lack of a better term) romantic love, I might feel differently. All I can do now is hope that when I do have it, whenever that might be, I cherish it.

Till next time (and hopefully on a less serious note),

Chloe.