The Love Imperative

You might remember a few weeks ago I mentioned that a local doctor committed suicide; it has been a topic of much conversation in town ever since.

I spoke to a friend recently, who shared with me the details of his own suicide attempt. As I heard his story, I waited patiently for the reason why he wanted to end it all. And the reason?

A broken heart.

That makes sense; those MF’s can hurt. I listened as he spoke of being in love, and then from out of nowhere- no warning- she left. I sympathised, from the comparative safety of my own relationship, and thanked God this was not me- until my own relationship collapsed in a similarly unexpected fashion shortly after.

I am not the most stable chap walking the planet, but I was not seized with a frantic urge to end it all. I’m not against suicide; certain toxic creatures ought to finish up if they imagine there is a chance they might hurt or kill others. But I did not feel possessed by an urge to take an early exit myself.

Why? Because I know how to break up.

I’m not all that good at keeping a relationship afloat, but I am well versed in the art of the collapse. I have had plenty of practice at it. And it was at the conclusion of my latest effort that my mind went back to the friend who shared his own sad story, and his own ensuing suicidal feelings.

All this man wanted was to love, and to be loved.

I remember at the time, saying to him, these were not unreasonable expectations.

Or are they?

I know the importance of self-love, and unconditional love for others, but I also know there is another kind of love; and in this age of the self-help generation, it has almost become an unspoken filthy little secret.

I would rather tell people I have a foot fetish than a childlike crush. By force of habit, I seem to have become conversant in hiding my need for a special ‘groovy kind of love’ as if it were a dirty magazine. In the age of existential chic, diminished expectations, and the romance of living ‘lone wolf’ style, I realized over time I have come to be almost ashamed of my secret desire- the desire for romantic love.

I wonder if I have not become so estranged from this not unreasonable or unnatural desire that I now exist in the half life of a perpetual state of self sabotage?

I am so cool, I know romantic love is a rarity- and it remains so because I keep it so. Not unlike regarding a hamburger as a delicacy merely by not allowing myself to have one- or having one, denying myself full enjoyment of it.
Henceforth, I keep love at arms length, so that when it inevitably ends, it does not hurt the way it might do if I immersed myself fully.

Nor, of course, do I feel the relationship as deeply as I ought.

The answer? Probably to shoot myself.

Which brings me closer than I imagined to how my suicidal friend at the beginning of the story felt- albeit in a very different way, for different- and yet in a strange way identical- reasons. We all want to love, and be loved.

We fail, and are told it is something we are doing wrong, until we correct it.

We then fail again, in different ways.

Over and over again, as we drift further and further away from our core self and its natural, authentic impulses, in a tangle of weird compensatory strategies, knot upon knot until we no longer know who we are or what the hell we want; and in the process we become so desolate, self-destruction makes perfect sense.

My own hypothesis is that humans are stuck with this self- perpetuating destructive streak, and pursue it to its inexorable conclusion into war and desecration of nature…

All because we are unable to love.

We had better find a solution; ere we wipe the species from the face of the earth in an orgy of addiction to self hate…

Time to lay down our weapons of fear and loathing, and return to where it all began…

To genuine, old fashioned home-style love??

Maybe…