Belle and Sebastian write about love.

Belle and Sebastian write about love, so do I, so does everyone. Where Belle and Sebastian sing in a major key, I mope about clinging onto a minor chord.

Love is an elusive and mythical beast much like a unicorn, chimera or altruism. It promises so much, we dream and search for it, but it is never seen. It is a story that we tell our children.

Love… the fable, the beast in which we put so much hope and time into finding, and then IF we were to find it, we would then live in fear that it would soon be lost. Nothing lasts forever and love is too good to be true. We are told that it is an ideal to strive for, a state of being, ‘nirvana’, but is it? IF we were to do a cost/benefit analysis, weigh up the years of uncertainty, of suffering, of waiting, the years of loneliness, of feeling forlorn and forsaken, rejected and unloved…Does it all make up for a few POSSIBLE moments of bliss? Even if love was happened upon, by chance perhaps (and saying that, you would have more luck winning the lottery), if you did stumble across love, you are then faced with the other person, for they have to love you the same for it to work. Love unreturned is unrequited and can become obsession-unhealthy and poisonous. So not only do we spend all of this time, energy and suffering in the search for love, but unless the other loves us in return, it is for naught. I laugh contemptuously for all I have ever known was of unrequitedness and rejection.

I am so used to failure that I doubt I would recognize love should it ever arrive. Instead, I will likely still be chasing those who could not care any less and who do not love me.  And yet…. ever the hypocrite am I, for despite it all, I still yearn for love and have hope. There is still the thought that calls out, somewhere deep in me, refusing to disappear, whispering ‘one day, somewhere he will be and will love you as you deserve’.

Stuart from Belle and Sebastian sings ‘Don’t touch me, if you touch me you can never go back’, It should be, ‘Don’t touch me, if you touch me I can never go back’.  I think of ‘him’… Yes… If we had just chatted and that was it... he would be forgotten, perhaps not easily, for is cute and has a lovely smile… but this would be a memory that could be eroded with enough time, but we did more than chat, we shared and as clichéd as it sounds (for the truth is often a cliché), he touched me and I saw that he was special and unlike any other. I have tried not to like him, I really have, I have told myself all the reasons why I should not, why I cannot, why it will not be. I have had counseling, alternate therapy/treatment, you name it and I have tried it. It has been 6 months and though I have my moments where I feel better, I cannot stop liking him, despite him not caring for me, I cannot stop. I ask the Lord above why and the Lord does not answer.

Why am I giving another the power over my happiness. The locus of control is externalized and I cannot bring it back to me. I hate this. I hate it!! I want to reclaim my power, my happiness, my life, I want to be happy in my loneliness again… well not happy, for that is impossible, but ‘used’ to it again, used to the feeling of being alone, I want to be solely responsible for my happiness again...safe and warm in the knowledge that there was not and will never be one to love me… but he has changed all of that… He has shown me a possibility. I am on edge, waiting for words that never come, waiting for the love that will never come… waiting for him, who will never come…

I sit here miserable.

Merry Christmas.

I go back to Belle and Sebastian, maybe they have an answer for me… Stuart sings ‘and its dumb, thinking of you …the way that you were’ He is right, I can’t cling to the past, to a moment in time regardless how special, but how do I let go??? The song continues and Stuart addresses me- ‘you could love’, Is this the answer? Is loving the way out, to love, to love myself…but can I? I don’t know… I don’t know… as if he heard me, Stuart responds ‘you can love…’

I smile… I can try Stuart,

I can try.

A series of Major chords sends me off on my way.