Love’s not fair
A personal story: Must love end with a relationship?
This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short
-Jane Hirshfield, 1953
In the first chapter of Thrills and Chills, I wrote that my life is pretty ordinary and that I’m just another human. I cry. I laugh. I get sick. I fall in love. But what I forgot to say is that I also experience breakups with the people I love.
Right now I’m reeling from a heartbreak. Until recently I have been experiencing fits of anger and resentment. I have said some regretful, unkind word and totally diminished a person to a bad image of inflated unseemly traits.
I have also been dramatic. And a few people have written and spoken to me and said: ‘Don’t harbour resentment’, ‘take deep breaths’, ‘go out’ and ‘don’t think too much.’ But that, I think, is a little too much sense for someone who is dealing with raw emotions of a breakup. But their words have not been in vain. I think I started conducting myself because of them. And for that, I’m grateful. I am not going to harbour resentment.
It is a great deal of pain and anger to know you can’t love someone you so deeply love anymore. It is absolute suffering to lose that friend of the heart who lights up your face. It is agonizing to watch the person in whom you have invested your time and life walk away.
But I think it is necessary sometimes that lovers fall out, for love can be a poison if it is with the wrong person or at the wrong time. And the truth is, sometimes love between two people does not work despite them being two nice people.
Love has its own tribulations. Everyone who has ever been in love knows this. William Shakespeare said, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ You all will disagree at one point or another. Your hearts will be pulled in directions. You will get hurt.
Love is not perfect but it is a most beautiful thing. Love with the right person at the right time is bliss. It is pure joy.
But more importantly — because this is what I wanted to say — is that love is unfair. You adore someone but resent them after you break from a relationship with them. People become bitter enemies. After getting someone you had in a wish-list, you dump them in a blacklist.
Your ex, even when you are over them, becomes someone you shouldn’t be seen with, someone you should not interact with. Yet it is someone who meant the world to you, someone who probably made you a better person.
Breaking up with someone also breaks the friendship, the trust, the support they were giving you. This, I think, is unfair if this person didn't cheat on you or commit some outrageous sin.
And finally, for the all the differences that we may have with people and that may lead to a breakup, I think we owe them the simple truth which is, they are beautiful and nice and wonderful and that’s why we fell for them in the first place.
PS: This write-up is inspired by personal circumstances but it is meant for general reading. So do not think it is a revelation of what happened. But I will outrightly say I’m sorry for any hurtful word I said @DKA.
