Love, or Something Lke it.

"Almost all the time you tell yourself you're loving somebody, you're really just using them. This only looks like love." -  Chuck P

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about love. What it means. Where it comes from. Why feels so good, and hurts so bad, all at the same time.

My roommate came home with her ex-boyfriend tonight. They broke up about a year ago, and were in a 6-year relationship prior to that. When I first met her, she was still wounded from the split. She thought this guy was the "one." I don't know the details of the break-up, but it was clear that he wasn't ready to "settle down," and things ended because of that simple fact. Seeing her with him, it was quite obvious her feelings were still strong, and while some time has passed since they'd last been together, it also looked quite clear that the reasons for their break-up hadn't really changed.

This got me thinking about the relationships I've been in. Most of my friends would say that I've been pretty lucky with the men in my life. I don't think luck has very much to do with it, but regardless, I have had some pretty awesome relationships. Granted, they couldn't have been "that" awesome, because, well... they ended. But overall, the guys who have been "lucky" enough to call themselves my boyfriend, have all been really amazing fellas. 

At some point, with all the men I've ever loved, there was a moment where I was so in love, I didn't think I could live without them. Deep down, I obviously knew that I could in fact, "live without them." I had been alive before they were in my life, and I would be alive after. But at the time, the love was so intense, it felt like I would just evaporate into the atmosphere without them. Not in the co-dependent, "l need constant attention or I'll freak out and accuse you of cheating on me while at dinner with my parents" sort of way. < --- (Yes. This totally happened to me. *NOTE* - Just to be clear, it was the GUY who freaked out at dinner in front of his parents and blamed it on love, it was NOT me). But in the, "You're so amazing, I just want to be part of your life" sort of way.

Thinking back, I can't help but wonder, where does the intensity of this overwhelming love go?

I've always believed that above and beyond everything, love is the only thing that matters. For the first time in my life, I'm not sure that's true anymore.

I still believe in love, but suddenly, it's become this massive black-hole of uncertainty, circulating in and out of my mind's eye. What if the person you love just stops loving you? What if the more you fall in love with someone, the more they start falling out of love with you? And what if, at the end of the day, above and beyond everything, love just isn't enough?

I know that everyone who has ever been in love, has speculated on the above questions, but this is the first time I've ever really cared about the truth in the answers.

Maybe it's that I'm getting older. Maybe it's that I feel a little lost. Or maybe I'm just starting to give up on all the bullshit that falls out of our mouths when we're trying to get laid, or simply want to feel close to someone without actually having to align our hearts, and attach.

Everybody is so busy trying to "find themselves," I feel like we've stopped trying to find each other. I'm not by any means trying to be judgmental here either. I mean fuck, I'm the QUEEN of "trying to find myself." But honestly, I don't think we ever really "find ourselves." I think we're a collection of everyone we've ever known. A mosaic of fragmented memories. Everyone who has ever touched us, physically, emotionally, mentally, is a part of who we are.

The tiny pieces all fit together in the most fucked up Picasso style painting, known simply, as our life.  We don't "find ourselves," we accidentally create ourselves through a series of mistakes, near-death experiences, and existential crises. 

But in the end, it seems like love is the glue that holds it all together. I realize how nauseating that last sentence is, but I can't help but believe in its validity.

So how far do you go for love? Do you block out the doubts, and love with your heart wide open, even though it might get ripped out of your chest? Do you trust someone who you know might just be as evil as you are? Do you move to another place just to follow it?  Or do you let it go because you're not sure how much you're willing to gamble?

And when love leaves us defeated and broken, lying on the bathroom floor, do we still believe that it was "worth it?"

Is it ever "worth it?"

In one sentence, Oscar Wilde bluntly sums up exactly what i'm trying to say:

"The secret of life, is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived." 

I don't know what happened with my roommate and her ex-boyfriend tonight. But if life were a Nora Ephron screenplay,  they would fall back in love, get married, have some babies, and live in a bubble full of happiness, topped off with an epic proposal on the roof of the empire state building. 

Tragically however, this is real life, and shit like that doesn't happen in real life.

Even if they did fall back in love, get married, and have babies, at some point, one of them would get restless and need to "find themselves" again. My roommate will become frustrated by her husbands long hours at the office, so she'll start flirting with the kid at the cafe down the street. The babies are stressing her out, and her husband isn't helping like she thought he would. They start fighting all the time, and the distance between them grows. She starts sleeping with the cafe kid, while her husband bangs his secretary on company time. They become ghosts of the people they once were, expertly pretending that everything is just perfect...

Perfect like it was in the beginning...

In the beginning... back when love was enough.

I think it's safe to say that I feel quite strongly their relationship won't be working out.

But hey... what do I know? 

love you mean it.

*SORRY* - I know, I suck.

Okay. I think it's safe to say that I FAIL at updating my blog with any sort of frequency.

BUT... I'm going to start updating more.

Considering the fact that there are only like 3 people who even read this, I don't think anyone really cares about the frequency of my "blogging," but either way, I'm going to write more.

Promise.

love you mean it.

Dear downstairs neighbors.

 
So... my downstairs neighbors have the loudest fucking sex in the world. They have the loudest fucking sex at 3 in the fucking morning, almost every fucking night. Now, I've had lots of really loud sex (sorry dad), not so much recently, but in general, if I'm going to be FUCKING really loud, I'll attempt to be considerate about the volume and time of day/night said fucking is taking place, since I live with roommates in a VERY thin-walled Victorian flat.

It seriously sounds like people are dying downstairs, and their bodies are being thrown against the wall, over and over again. More than anything, at this point, I just want to see what the hell they're doing to make so much goddamn noise. It's disturbingly loud.

Soooo...

Dear downstairs neighbors,

Please shut the fuck up. Some people actually like sleeping in the middle of the night. Getting awoken by your guttural moans at 3am, isn't really working for me, so if you could possible start the animal sex at around like 10pm instead, it would be greatly appreciated.

Happy Fucking!

- B

love you mean it.

♥ Stephanie Michelle Proctor ♥

Three years ago today, my step-sister Stephanie passed away.

Despite the time that's passed, I can't stop myself from wanting to believe that she's just off at college, and I'll see her over the holidays. We'll go to the gym together, and make fun of my dad for wearing fleece zip-up vests and Birkenstocks.

It's fucking unfair.

Sometimes I feel like there's a perpetual dark cloud hanging over my head, and no matter how much light I'm surrounded by, this shadow is always blocking the warmth.

The self-centered little girl inside of me is constantly asking, "Why me? Why do these bad things always happen to me?" Truth be told, sometimes, I want to wallow in her words. I want to swim in the vast ocean of self-pity, but I choose not to. Because if I'm going to swim in that ocean, I better get in line. There's a whole collection of nations who have experienced more heartache than I could ever imagine. Families across the globe who know things about loss that I will never understand.

But that doesn't make losing Stephanie any less devastating, or any less important than the millions of other children who have died from circumstances that were not only preventable, but didn't need to happen in the first place. And while I don't believe in a heaven, or the fiery inferno of "hell," I do believe that the massive amount of energy that flows through each and every one of us, has to go somewhere once our hearts stop beating.

I don't know where the charged groupings of electrons escape too, but I would like to believe that they stick around and disperse into the air. I would like to believe that the energy from everyone who has ever passed, fills the atmosphere, and surrounds all of us in microscopic molecular patterns that can occasionally be observed in split second glances when we accidentally fall into the right frequency.

I'm aware at how insane the above theory sounds, but haven't you ever been in your head all day, and seen a shadow out of the corner of your eye that you could have sworn was a person? Haven't you ever felt someone behind you, only to turn and find that you're all alone? I'm not pontificating on whether or not “ghosts” exist, I'm talking about energy. I'm talking about that moment when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, because you feel a draft in a windowless room.

The brain is such a powerful generator, I suppose there is a more likely chance that these notions of energy interference are explainable by the great depths our minds will travel, just to cope with the intense emotional blender loss generates.

I don't care though. Right now, the rational juxtaposition is worthless to me. Because despite the facts, I want to believe that when I miss my mother, and I close my eyes to picture her face, that her energy is somewhere close, somewhere near me. I want to believe that when I focus in on the memory of her hand touching my forehead, brushing the hair off my cheek, the fragment of time where I can almost feel her next to me, is actually real. That when I think I can smell her skin, or see the outline of her frame, it isn't just my imagination, but a little piece of the molecular pattern her shell was constructed of.

So, whether or not it's “crazy,” or “stupid,” or simply “false,” I not only want to believe it, I need to believe it. I need to believe for that split second, her energy was there, and I could feel it because I fell onto it's frequency. I need to believe that it wasn't all for nothing.

I need to believe that when I'm driving down my parents street, and the wind hits my face with that perfect smell of fall on its coat tails, Stephanie is there too... spread out and dispersed in the atmosphere, circulating through the seasons, in and out of lungs across the world.

I need to believe it, not because it's necessarily true, but because it means something to me.

What is any of this worth if it doesn't mean something, if it doesn't matter?

So Stephanie, where ever your dispersed carbon and molecular pattern has floated off too, and whatever frequency you might be traveling within, I love you, and you are missed with every ounce of blood, bone, and sinew inside me.

You are missed with every fragment of every second that has passed since you've been gone.

You are missed more than any words from any language could ever accurately convey.

♥ Stephanie Michelle Proctor ♥
October 18, 1986- October 2, 2006