LOSTLOVELOST

I’m so fucking sick and tired of this thing called love.

The empty promises and hollow dreams of its bullshit have Moltov Cocktailed the pages of my biography, sending countless years and endless tears up in petroleum-fuelled flames. A single word or action has been the match to ignite the inferno that has engulfed my heart, reducing it to a withered, charred husk too many times.

I’ve swallowed its sweet almond poison again and again, pierced my veins with its ecstatic hypodermic, languished in its euphoric rush with no thought of coming down, and endured the bitter wrath and razor teeth of its savage withdrawl.

And I have healed. I bare the scars of lost loves and broken hearts. I have nursed myself in the darkened halls of the sanatoriums of the soul, reinvented this life from ‘we’ to ‘me’ over and over until I can no longer even remember what it once was like when it was new and pure and whole.

The concept of love destroys us all. Not a single one of us will walk this life from start to finish without succumbing to the bitter, acidic bite of lost love and heartache. Our ears are constantly pricked, senses alert, our heart’s ear strained for any subliminal nuance of love. But this thing we chase, this evasive prey that peels back our fingers to release our grasp as often as it relinquishes its innocence, is someone else’s dream, a Hollywood backdrop, the tinsel and baubles on a dry and brittle tree.

I cannot be so callous as to suggest that love does not exist – far from it. But the realisation is that we have it all back to front. We go searching for this ethereal wish founded upon the words and emotions of others. From day dot, the second we peel back the labial curtains on this bright and terrifying world, we are told that love is our purpose, and handed the blueprints to a stranger’s house.

Love is not what we are told it is, just as life is never the same twice over. Fairy tales are made with the mind and naivety thrives on those candy-coated myths. Perhaps, once or twice, true love was founded upon some random circumstance, a romantic’s wet dream of a perfect love, but it happened in spite of these things, not because of them.

Love is like those mind-fucking magic eye pictures that were slapped up on every ‘90s teen’s bedroom wall. You can stand there ‘til you can’t feel your legs no more, eyes fucking throbbing, desperate to see that goddamn pony that all your friends saw in the first five seconds. But you may as well be looking for Elvis in the flesh, because the harder you look, the blinder you become.

We don’t find love, love sneaks up behind us and clips our ankles, sending us face first toward the pavement and a pool of blood and broken teeth. If we try too hard, she’ll beat us down, leaving nothing but bruised shins and bruised hearts. The more we crave this notion of a perfect love, of that saccharine bullshit we see in the movies, of everything we believe will be our happily ever after, the more scars and ex’s we will collect.

It’s a motherfucking lightning bolt out of blue skies. You have no idea when it will hit. There’s no way you can predict it and there’s nothing you can do about it when it does. It won’t look like the love you pictured, it won’t feel like your heart’s belief. It doesn’t follow formula and will not listen to reason.

You will never find love if you keep looking – but the second you stop, she’ll find you. And you won’t be in for a gentle freefall – that bloodthirsty bitch will take you by the throat and drag you down, gasping for breath and clawing for the surface. But if you can let go your fear, hold on to hope and trust her intentions, she will gather you up, hold you tight and protect you in the darkness ‘til the bitter end.

Love is not the place you thought it was. It is laugh and cry, it is pleasure and pain, it’s a deep and dark mysterious place. Let her swallow you down until you’re spitting blood from burning lungs, because it’s a precious place that few will find and nothing can replace. It’s nice down there.