on love (and other things)

// Might combine this with another piece if I feel like it, Idk.

// This might have a part 2.

It's 20:36 at the moment, and I woke up maybe 10 or so minutes ago from a nap. I've been napping a lot these days, less so because I'm tired, and more so because I'm emotionally overwhelmed. Your Shirt by Chelsea Cutler is playing in the background as I type this, and while it is ridiculously gut-wrenching, I think I'm going to allow myself to sob and wail and wallow in self-pity for a while.

Much has been said about this feeling that people call love. Many great artists have come before me who have attempted to capture the essence of this emotion in words, and there is no doubt that there will be more after me who will continue to do the same. They say it is everywhere you look, yet it will elude you should you choose to actively look for it. It comes to you when you least expect it, yet it exists in and follows you to every place imaginable.

I am not going to try and describe what has been deemed a magical and inexplicable feeling since I wouldn't know how to do it justice. It would be naïve, and a rather futile and comical exercise on my part. No, that is not what I am here for.

I am here because I have arrived at the conclusion that I may have never actually known what love is.

-

Now, I am not saying that to be edgy, although I can appreciate why I may come across as pretentious. Let me give you the facts of my life: I am a 21-year-old woman who has a mental illness (or 3, all diagnosed) and has never been able to hold down a stable relationship in her life. Keeping up with me has been a rather exhausting task for my friends, but even more so for me, considering that I have to live through every episode of my life while they can tune in and out at will.

Therefore, it would make sense for me to never have experienced romantic love in my life. I have a whole existence to find it, right?

Except, I am not just talking about romantic love. I have never experienced love of any kind. I do not know what platonic love is. When I say my "I love yous" to the people I say them to, those are nothing but empty words. I feel like I should say it, so I do, but I don't attach much value to them.

So it would make sense why I say words are easy. I have been making empty promises to people all my life.

And if every single one of my friends decided to band together today and walk out of my life, I would not be fazed. I have become so, so comfortable in my own loneliness and solitude that I have grown past the need for another person. I am grateful for all of your presence, but the fact of the matter is that I simply do not love you. I can't.

> Are you trying to say that you don't love your family either?

I'm not going to sit here and lie, but I think that part might be true. There is not a single person in this world that I love (or care about, for that matter). Not even myself.

What I believe I experience is an attachment towards the people in my life. My family is different in the sense that I feel a huge sense of duty and responsibility towards them, what with them devoting as much time as they have into raising me and cultural expectations, but love? I'm not sure about that.

I would be absolutely devastated if they passed away, but it would be more so due to that attachment than out of love. There are a few moments when love seems to find a way, I think, but those moments are few and fleeting. I am affectionate occasionally with my family, but they don't last for too long. That deep, emotional connection that you are supposed to have - no, I can't say I have that.

Okay, the more I think about it, the more I feel that there may be a bit of love there between my family and me. They raised me, after all. But I don't think it has been enough to qualify me as someone who knows what love is. Perhaps this part is a lot more nuanced than I initially thought, and requires more introspection.

On my friends - I don't think I've been able to develop an attachment towards my friends. I do not feel like any of them is an innate part of me or that I would not be able to survive without one of them. That is simply not true. I have never felt an ounce of affection towards any of them. I have felt like I have a responsibility to care for them, protect them and be there for them when the need arises, but there has never been a moment in time when I thought that I had a genuine connection with any of them. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don't feel understood by them, or even heard most of the time. When I talk to / about them, I can quite literally feel a wall around my heart. A literal wall that blocks entry. These connections are simply not deep enough for me.

I still stay in touch for years on end and maintain quite a few of these relationships, because that is what I have been told you're meant to do. That is the right thing to do, and so I will do that. I will give my friends what they want / need from me - I owe them that, but there is not much that I expect from them in return. I cannot ask for them to understand me when I'm not willing to give them an opportunity to. Perhaps time will result in deeper connections being forged, and take away the emptiness that I feel. Maybe one day it will happen. Surely.

It is ironic then that I seek deep, emotional connections with other people. I know a lot of people, and there are quite a few of them who would drop everything at any point in time if I told them I needed them, but I don't feel seen, known, or heard. People perceive me as someone that has so many friends - I seem to always have someone to hang out with, someone to say hi to - but they don't know just how alone I actually am. Not feeling understood adds a layer of loneliness to it, but I don't think that makes me upset anymore. It's just another fact of my life that I've ended up accepting. Things are what they are.

I don't feel an intense need to let people in and allow them to see me anymore. I don't feel a need to be understood, because I have felt rejected every time I made an attempt to bare my soul. If you get what I mean, you get it and that's that. I don't have to connect with anyone. I'm good on my own.

I do form connections with other people, whatever that means. I build relationships that don't mean much to me, so that I can call myself a functional member of society and lead the type of life that someone my age is expected to. These relationships are beneficial on their own. There's a lot to learn from the people I associate myself with, and everyday I grow a little more as a person because of them. Also, something about networking?

The emotions that I have experienced in my life include attachment, attraction, lust, and obsession. There have been moments when I have felt affectionate towards others, but those relationships never lasted. Only one came naturally anyway - every other one felt forced. Maybe one day this will change. I'm no longer fussed about it.

The only thing I truly care about is winning, and retaining a good reputation while I do so, thus my desire to always do what has been dictated is the right thing. I do the things I do because I believe that they will take me to where I want to be in life. I wouldn't lower myself to engage in less honourable behaviours, because I also firmly believe in justice and fairness. It makes me sound so selfish, but I don't care for people, I conquer them. And when I am unable to do that, that's when it hurts. That's when I get angry and upset. It's not out of love, it's out of a feeling of failure.

However, with this realisation comes a sense of liberation. I now have what I regard to be a reasonable explanation for my behaviour, and a strong reason to believe that I can get through the loss of people quite easily. I can end up replacing you like you never meant anything, because you probably never did (nothing to do with you but everything to do with me). That's what I do in my life, anyway. I've been cutting off people with more ease than I have at any point in my life before, and I am not at all fazed.

It also comes with newfound sadness, because this means that I've never had a real connection with another human being, and I might never, either. This did not happen to me overnight; rather, it was the culmination of a series of events that took place in my formative years that have made me resort to closing myself up forever. I do not know how to reverse it. I am worried that my inability to do so might mean that I will remain emotionally unavailable for the rest of my life, and allow good people to slip through my fingers.

What a blessing and a curse. A paradox of a life.

Heaven or Hell?