Alma Recommends: “Love On The Brain” by Rihanna
On Love, Lust, and Obsession
Rihanna sounded quite loud through the speakers near us the last night I saw you. I think she wanted to make sure we heard her since. After all, her experience sounded so much like ours.
The bar was slightly crowded, more so than the prior time we were there. We sat in the same area: small tables yet spacious enough to keep our distance from one another.
Rihanna knows how dark and destructive love can be, and she was trying to warn us. Her presence among us was intimidating, with each shivering chord cutting through our veins and letting us know that ours was, like hers, a damaging-yet-undying love, and that it was time to let go.
I had many unanswered questions for her that night:
- What drives us to those relationships?
- What makes us stay for so long?
- Is it really love? Or is it lust? Or even worse, obsession?
- Do we like the pain of that kind of love?
These questions echo in my head time and time again. It seems like I only know the kind of love that hurts. The impossible kind that takes you up and down the emotional rollercoaster where adrenaline is high, and then tanks to its lowest low.
