Amor Fati

Liz Gilbert (Eat Pray Love): I did love you, Stephen.

Stephen: I know. But I still love you.

Liz: So, love me.

Stephen: But I miss you.

Liz: So, miss me. Send me love and light every time you think of me. Then drop it. It won’t last forever. Nothing does.

What is it in the heart of mankind that holds on, and refuses to let some Loves go? What about our hearts is strong and stubborn enough to believe that love, even when it comes with so much baggage, is still worthwhile? These lyrics by Andy Biersack from his solo career as Andy Black, speak to this concept…

Pick Up the pieces before we let this go…

Faded in, Faded out

The feeling’s gone, it’s like we’re enemies

Checking in, checking out

We’re strangers now, but I don’t believe that

Love was made to break

No I don’t believe that love was made to break.

I hadn’t heard it put like that, in that way, but when set up with his music, it really hit home. Love was not made to break, it was made to bind, to hold, to persevere, to give and above all, to sacrifice…but not break. When we break, our human bodies and emotions fail this otherworldly force that can connect two people endlessly. Not just two romantic partners, even, but the love of a family, love for teammates, teachers, pets, children, even dreams…Love was not made to break, it was made to sustain, to bolster, to protect, to believe and to BE THERE no matter what. I’m convinced broken hearts came with the fall. I know, I know, take the evangelical out, “all badness came from the fall”, but hear me out. I believe that broken hearts were created when love was yanked out of its ground in newly born hearts.

What causes the most bitterness? What causes suffering? What causes cynicism and uncertainty?

Lack of Love.

Somehow, we loose this inhuman quality or it gets loose inside us, and we fight it, because it is so holy, that we know there’s something amazing about it. We feel this connection with something and when they feel it back, there is nothing to compare with that sensation of “realness” or “belonging” or “wholeness”. Bitterness and cynicism grow in the ground of a heart and mind that has either never had love, had a bent and twisted love, or has grown accustomed to ignoring love because the ones who offered it weren’t strong enough to maintain it.

Caring for anyone can sometimes feel like holding on to a fire hose, connected directly to a fire hydrant that’s always turned on. If you haven’t seen this in action, one hose can often take 5 to 6 big firemen in full gear to hold it steady. Love is massive, it’s fierce, it’s intense and it’s strong, and sometimes we are just weak. I have fallen in love with two people in my entire life. They are both exes, at the time of this writing, but one of them is going to get married this month. I haven’t seen, or dealt with them since 2014, but I have flashbacks at the most inopportune times, and I feel this ache. I knew I loved him. It was so hard, trying to work with an emotionally needy, somewhat manipulative, but generous heart like his, and I’m sure I wasn’t a walk in the park either, but our vibes synced up in the most amazing ways. We met when we were both shattered, emotionally, and struggling through a dark place. We leaned on each other and that grew into a deep connection. I can look back now and see the potholes, the grey areas and the ways that I was played, and I understand that now. I gave a lot, and he accepted a lot…overall, yes, it was good that we broke up when we did. Do I wonder how we would be now that we are totally different people? Yes. I do. Do I wonder if we would have ever worked? Yes. Does it matter? By the end of this month, this post will be a useless, rhetorical examination of a long-dead carcass…but As I’ve written about before, Cathexis is my attempt to find meaning when I do not have control, or understanding of something. I do not think that love was made to die. I still love the young adult I knew at college. I still care about the hearts I have fallen for, in my life, but to be “In Love”…that’s a rare thing.

I want the best for those who are no longer in my life. I want the best for them, for him, for all of them, even if I don’t ever want to see some of them again. How is that possible? How can we be so deep with someone and then something, someday, stops? How have people so easily shut those hydrants off? This is the only one I have not been able to cauterize, 4 years later, and I still ache sometimes. I can’t imagine how divorced people do it. I’ve seen it happen, I’ve grown up around divorce and I know what it can do to families. I’ve seen and felt engagements die, I’ve seen marriages die, I’ve seen new love start and new freedoms given to their hearts, and I am proud of how fearless some hearts can be. I do not feel fearless. I feel hyper-analytical and cynical. Because, too, too easily, we can end up living in misery, with a heart that doesn’t love us. There are few things in this world that are as lonely as being in a relationship with someone who acts like they’re single, with you. And there is no escape from that loneliness, unless they change their heart, which if they don’t want to, they won’t. I despair and cringe when I think of being attached to someone who could care less if I was around. How easily we negate someone’s existence if it makes us inconvenienced or unhappy.

This is a post that will have to be left open ended, because there is no closure that I can find in my fearful, doubting heart, yet. Maybe someday the story will change for the better. Maybe it will stay the same, and I pray it doesn’t get worse. But I do know one thing…Love always remains.