Monday, January 3, 2011

Days #124-130: Smooth as butter or as jagged as the White Cliff's of Ireland


It pains me to see my family or any of my closet friends suffer. Nothing pains me more than witnessing the cruelty of a broken heart and the injustice of feelings not reciprocated. It's devastating to see a friend's optimism for love flicker like a fragile flame and the hope of a brilliant and billowing future with that one special person reach a road block. There seem to be no words or actions that seem to bring any comfort or relief to the situation.

What pains me the most about the cruelty of love and loss is that I can clearly empathize and understand what my friends are experiencing. I understand the piercing blow through the heart; the inability to catch your breath when he creeps back in to your head; or the deep sadness and loneliness that accompanies the aftermath. Freud wrote, "We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love."

Love seems to fall into two categories: one that proceeds as smooth as butter and the other that is as sharp and as jagged as a cliff. OK, so perhaps this is a bit too black and white. However, realistically, a good love proceeds like a the gentle waves of the ocean, occasionally hitting a few bumps and mildly crashing, but in the end it finds it's equilibrium. A tortuous love involved diving off a cliff bouncing off each and every sharp edge and blunted rock, crashing unprotected to the bottom, only to get back up and do it all over again. The idea being that there is never ever any consistency. There is no equilibrium, no balance, no back up plan. It's either higher than a kite or pummeling to the bottom.

Now to everyone out there, I don't pretend to me an expert. I wish an expert, then maybe I could have avoided all of the pain and suffering I had to endure these past 10 plus years. All I know is what I have learned and what I have experienced. Abigail Van Buren said, "If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd all be millionaires."

I want all of my friends to know how wonderful they are and how much they deserve to find a love that does not leave them guessing. They deserve a love in which two people give and take equally, work together as a team, and at the end of the day smile at each other with delight. Maybe after we have all bounced off a jagged edge or two, shed a few tears, and hit the bottom, we will stand up and keep from climbing back up that cliff to continue the vicious cycle. Instead, ride those waves for a while and allow the good love to finally decide to hop on our wave and enjoy the ride together.

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