If It’s Too Bad To Be True, It Probably Is
On Love and Agony (Love’s Best Friend).
Sometimes you meet a person and your heart instantly bursts wide open. And here you were, thinking you would never be able to love again. And all you can do is uncontrollably laugh at yourself.
And, among all the love, all your pain, grief and fear start treacherously crawling to the surface as well. They weren’t welcome, but still showed up like an underdressed guest to a fancy party. I guess that’s why they call it lovesick.
Everything may be going great in your new relationship. But you’re bewildered, in excruciating pain, and, seemingly, for no reason.
It almost feels like there is a broken record playing in your head on repeat:
“I can’t trust,” “I can’t let myself go through the pain of loss again,” “This time I definitely won’t survive it.”
Even if loss is nowhere in sight, your body remembers the prior instances of brutal heartache. Fear grows. Survival becomes the only concern of your scattered mind as it takes your unassuming body along for this evil ride, shutting it down and tensing it up: “Just in case we get viciously attacked we’ll need all the saved up resources,” it reasons.
The waiting game begins — waiting of the end.
“If it’s too good to be true it probably is,” you tell yourself.
“Maybe it’s best if I end it first?”
“Maybe it will hurt less this way?”
“It will definitely hurt less this way!” you mutter deliriously in incoherent delusion.
But you don’t quite have the heart to end it yet. So you stay, but it’s no longer the old loving you that stays. At this point you’re pretty much a shell, a meager semblance of a person. Your inner landscape is now harsh — comprised of sharp thorny edges of scratchy defense mechanisms.
Yet, you relentlessly pretend to be the old loving version of yourself — putting a wide smile on your face, saying kind words.
But you’re no longer kind.
And then comes that dreadfully anticipated moment when the object of your affection doesn’t meet a need of yours in some way. Does something you don’t like. And it scares you. Deeply.
“If they did this what else are they capable of?” your mind asks.
“It’s time to act now!” it screams.
“We have to strike first, we can’t let them get away with that!”
And so you run or fight or shut them out or ghost. And push away the very person you now love the most. Because you can’t tolerate all the pain their, otherwise liberating, presence awakens in you.
And then you quietly return to the mundane pointlessness of your loveless existence, as denial pulls its seemingly see through, yet profoundly suffocating, veil over your disoriented consciousness, meticulously ensuring no remnants of awareness are left uncovered, reminiscing about how good that love was and that you would never be able to love again. Not this much anyway.
*****
Love and fear.
We often forget we can’t fully embrace the former without first courageously facing the latter. And that until the deepest pain inside our heart is felt, honored and understood, we, sadly, will never muster the valiant capacity to reside solely in the glorious kingdom of love for any prolonged period of time, if any at all.
True love is a high frequency. And one needs a strong operating system, a solid bandwidth and, perhaps, a few upgrades to tolerate this blissfully royal voltage. Getting there is a messy process.
But it’s so worth it.
