Would someone explain to me, please, how not being able to sleep or think straight, feeling sick all the time and having your entire mental and psychological state depend on the next email or text message from your pedestal-seated beloved is considered not only a normal part of life but wonderful enough to write endless stories and songs about? I let it happen to me nine years ago, and even the memory scares the living hell out of me. I didn't fall into that pit by accident, I jumped without a parachute and was naive enough to think I could land unscathed. Fortunately I managed to climb out, but it took a very long time and made me all the more determined to avoid a repeat performance.
That accounts for why I've locked all past tender feelings, and the possibility of any future ones, away in an emotional strongbox and will never let them out again, but it doesn't help me understand why some people, having come to the end of one relationship, are so keen to pair off with someone else without taking time out to consider what they've learned. Is being alone really so frightening that they'll 'hook up', as the young people say, with a new partner before the scars of severing their ties with the previous one have healed?
While it's true my atttude to these things at times appears more Vulcan than human, I'll admit I'm not as much of a solitary creature as I always thought I'd be. At times I get very lonely, more so than I ever believed I could, but I'd rather put up with that than risk getting involved with the wrong person just to avoid it and face a world of pain when it all blows up in my face. The single life seems like the lesser of two evils and, unlike Mae West, I'm not brave enough to pick the one I never tried before.
Power to your pen Steve. Great blog. I love the humour. Cheers from the used to bees at at S A Wrs C.
ReplyDeleteThere is a saying that encapsulates all of your anguish: "You have to kiss a lot of toads before you find a Prince." Whilst it isn't a toad you're looking for, on the basis of probability there is a Princess out there kissing toads and there is an equal probability that you are the toad she is looking for. Most Princesses won't kiss a toad but prefer to wait for their knight to rock up. Disappointment then beckons. But when you find a Princess kissing toads you can bet all your sheckles she is the genuine article.
ReplyDeleteWe lock away our experiences from fear of the unknown, yet daily we climb from our sleeping racks and step into the unknown. Daily we navigate our sphere in the certain knowledge we have no idea what's going to happen. That's why we call incidents 'accidents.' Moreover, we need to learn to spell attitude before we begin condemning it to a lifetime of purgatory. Hint, hint. As to our scars, these are the milestones of life and whether we gain our scars though lost loves or by self-imprisonment, the scars are equally as deep and equally as painful.
Many people can't be alone in life because they consider it their failure as a person. So they take anyone and everyone, and bemoan the short - term relationship. No matter how long it takes you to climb out of that chasm, you find it doesn't affect your inner surge for a new relationship - unless it's all too much trouble, the lifeline of the procrastinator. And love? You never let it happen to you. It happens whether you are looking for it or not. There are those who will revel in your torment and use it in place of the wet birch with which you historically flagellate yourself.
I'm sure any five bob shrink would have a field day with a belief that it's better to put up with the pain of loneliness than accept pain, great joy, suffering, growth, relationships or love. It costs. Our society has a cliché for everything and the one that comes to mind here is, "Anything worth having, costs."
The single life for the want of effort is the greatest sin mankind can know.