For The Heartbroken

I wish what I now feel about my ex wife, I felt about the two women I got involved with after her.  One I lived with for around a year. I think the relationship hobbled on for maybe almost two years, though it was decidedly dead long before I was conscious of the fact. Love can make you way more blind than masturbation ever will. The other woman I only talked to for around a week - but we had so much in common, and I was so eager - suddenly she just blocks me out of her life, and I am left thrown back into the pit of despair with the demons of the past reawakened, eager to feed mercilessly on my poor soul. A week! One week!

One thing is for certain:  I will not let anyone else into the sacred space of my heart unless they prove to me that they deserve to be there. I cannot go on pretending, with the idealistic notions of a child, that I will be loved as I love, just because that is reasonable and fair and just and good and decent. Nope. Doesn't work like that. 

People are of fickle minds and of fickle hearts. People are selfish. People are cruel. People are confused by what the romanticists have done to us on a cultural level. Love isn't perfect. Love isn't like in a novel, or a movie. Love is some real down and dirty, in your face shit. You need sparring gear to even enter the arena of love. 

Even though I know love is a choice and not a feeling, a conscious decision, and all that - I still let my need to be loved, and the euphoria of new love - the wonderful emotional state that actually puts a smile on your face when the morning comes -  I let that totally eclipse the rational, logical, objective part of me. And I paid dearly. I mean it almost killed me. 

Where is the balance?  It's like gambling. No matter how smart you are, how well you know the game, the odds, the player, you still are gambling. You still could lose everything. Trust me:  No matter how safe you think you are, it could end tomorrow. I never thought it could happen to me, even though it was all around me, even though the culture is drenched in the idea that monogamy is a quaint impractical obsolete idea which no modern and sophisticated person would afflict themselves with or encumber their partner with. You are the great individual, the only one who matters, the only one whose needs must be met.

We strange people who actually are looking for someone to give our loyalty to, who demand loyalty in return, who want permanence, and meaning, and growth, who know that individuality is good, but when placed upon the throne of worship becomes a weakness - we are just anachronistic weirdos that have to protect our hearts from whatever horrible messes you would call those out there that we have tried to love, and that have rejected us, torn us, caused our life to be poured out, caused us a seeming eternity of a living existential hell. It does get better. But not if you keep making the same mistake of loving someone who is not going to love you.