I was honestly never one to whom being in a relationship came naturally. I’ve had merely two and I was coerced into both. Not by manipulation, but by the betrayal of my heart to someone else’s. I had no choice–metaphysically speaking. Looking back, we certainly had it all figured out, but perhaps a bit too early.
Relationships, their beginnings, middles, and ends, have a way of highlighting your insecurities. You begin to see yourself as a reflection, using someone else’s gaze as your mirror. This is both the necessary and hideous nature of love. Women, we are suckers for words. And men are suckers for women. I learned some of the most beautiful parts of myself from someone else seeing them in me first. There is nothing like the sight of a boy’s eyes lost in bemused wonderment at you (though, you will find this happens very easily, and very frequently, as men are usually “bemused” by things that are “complex”…say, for example, women).
And women, I grudgingly admit, are easily driven mad by love. But what I purpose is not that it is love that ignites rage, and insecurities, and sadness–but a lack of understanding about one’s self. You must belong to no one but yourself.
You must belong to no one but yourself.
During winter break I took a breather from a lengthly relationship and began a new one. An intimate relationship with Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. I was flooded with a sense of purpose and clarity. I felt, finally, like myself again.
All great things are wild and free.
To truly love, I’ve heard, you must love selflessly. But there is nothing selfless about love. I have been feasted upon. I have been craved, like an addiction, and sucked for affection. I have seen my love drive others to depression. I have been merely me, and broken hearts. Love is a selfish, cancerous thing. It is dangerous. It is confusing. It is difficult to determine where it begins and ends–where it’s true and where it mocks something artificial.
Love is a woman’s most beautiful waste of time.
So play, darling, but do be home in time for supper.