Ramble, Bramble, Amble, Scramble

So seriously, what is love?

I'm sorry to go all Sophie's Choice, but there is nothing like pretending to be in love to make you all Philosophical. Everyone needs something, and so love is a different creature for everyone. A person that meets your needs, is someone who loves you. A touch cold, but oh, so painfully true.

Compatibility, a word that is often frowned upon because of its non romantic connotations and general remove from the fire and brimstone passion that relationships should have. (That's the other thing, which idiot decided that love should be all about spontaneity and heart over head? It makes for disaster. To love someone with your heart, I have realised is easy. I mean seriously, what does a heart know? Its all gushing, throbbing, pumping mindlessness, and yet we let it make such important decisions for us?) But without compatibility you will end up hurt and alone and completely alienated from the person you have now formed such a massive connection to, and even worse, completely alienated from yourself. You will open your eyes one day, and not recognise yourself. In the mission to achieve harmony with the one that you have chosen you have sacrificed things that were sacred, things that were you, and you did in the name of love and faith and forever. You will open your eyes feel incredibly silly, because now all that you had given up in love is now the ammunition that makes you unworthy.

I am ashamed to say that I never gave romantic relationships the credit they were due, and treated people whose relationships dominated, dictated and devastated their lives with much disdain and mockery. I never realised what a monumental amount of effort a relationship takes to succeed, no forget succeed, what it takes just to make one not-unhappy. Not happy, just not-unhappy. I suppose until now my relationships were background noise. I never considered them more and certainly treated them as less. So I never understood what took. I am now mired in so much.... quicksand. There are so many things that can go wrong that must be thought about and considered. And having now decided that I will be me no matter what, its like starting a new relationship, but one already bogged down with baggage. How do you people do more than one of these in a lifetime?

My Precious

And in the darkness we live.

Alone though unfettered. We keen with the despair of our lives and our loves, but we are careful, so careful never to look directly at the passageway that leads out of our cursed existance. Without our curse, we would be free. And that is the one thing we cannot bear to consider.

And so, in the darkness we live.

Content that our curse will keep us warm, and that freedom is just a mythical monster that we need not ever face.

And in the darkness we live, with you, our love.

How do you say goodbye to your life?

Isnt it tragic, that when faced with seperation, your mind invariably travels to the all the things that you will never have again, rather than the things that you will be finally free of.

Why are we hardwired to torture ourselves? Something I was so sure was ineveitable, and possibly the best course of action only a few moments ago seems now to be a course of action so ridiculous in its conception that I simply can not believe that it is what I had decided to do.

What I have done. Are we doomed to forever regret that which we may have thought out and discussed within the inner reaches of our minds? Why, when faced with the reality of my carefully reasoned arguements, the actual happening of an idea and an emotion, everything seems to be a pale echo of what I had thought it would truly be.

Why, and from where, comes the conviction that I am the only one to feel this way? How I now long to see you. To hear you sigh with impatience and reach for me in absolute exaspertaion that I might have taken what you said seriously. To hear you say it isnt true, that all the words we said meant nothing and that the decision we made to unintwine our lives was just anger and sleeplessness and stress. That the love was still there, unblemished and whole and enough, to take us through this storm and any other that might come our way. That we are still that, we, and not separated into the cold and dead you and I that I could surely never endure hearing on either of our lips.

How do you say goodbye to a heart and a soul full of love? DO you rip them out and pray that they will grow again? Hope that there is infact an endless supply of tender feelings, of love so deep that you leak a puddle onto the floor everytime you stand still for too long?

But it is. Whole and unblemished and enough. But perhaps, only for me. To love you and never forget even in the heat of mindless anger that you are mine and that I will love you no matter what I said and how often I said it. That you, beyond everything else I have ever touched were perfect. That i am sorry. Full stop.

And finally, at the end of our loving, as it crumbles and turns to gray dust that hides and festers beneath our fingernails, as the drum rolls one last time and the frail lightning of hope crashes out in the sky, finally, I have written you a love letter. One that I strived for so long to compose but could never find the words. Here my love, my heart, my life, here is a declaration of my love. I did not want to let you go.

All Hail the Prophet that Was

"Just scared.

That i will love you like a foolish child, and you will love me like a dignified adult."

Anger, thats what i feel. No. No not anger, rage. Blind, murderous, cannibalistic, all consuming, screaming, punching, kicking, biting Rage. God the stupidity. I knew, I always knew that no matter what he said, he would never love me like I could love him. He would never want me like I could want him. And I told him, I told him I was scared that I was too young, and he needed someone whose heart was less prone to absolutes of emotion. I suppose that was s stupid thing to say. You make something horrible sound beautiful enough and anyone will want it.

But he swore. He swore that he was not going to be the kind that disappeared on me, that the fatigue of living three and half decades would not destroy his ability to love me and want me and like the stupid, naieve little fool that I was I believed him.

And now...

I am alone. With a man who doesnt understand me and doesnt want to. All he wants is to live out his life in peace. Peace? Fuck peace.

I want LIFE not life. I want passion and sex and madness and desperation and awe that I can reach out and touch someone so incredible.

He's already had it you see. He's done and now he just doesnt need it anymore.

God I am a fool. Of all the people to not listen to, I picked me.

And now...

Now...

Now I have nothing to say.

My Dearest Love-shmove type emotion,

It is so nice to finally have met you. I have heard much about you, and though not all of it was good, I have been extremely anxious that we meet in person. There are somethings that just have to be done face to face, and you my dear Love, you epitomise all that should be embraced in bare skin and stilletoes.

I was thirteen, when I first realised that you were more than just an idea. In the cruelty of a gangly boy a vast three years older than I, I realised that you existed in more than just the hearts and minds of people. You had a body and a shape and a life all your own. And if we were good little mortals, we might be indulged with a gentle kiss on the forehead as you breezed your way across time destroying nations and sparking syphilis epidemics. Its a dirty job but someones got to do it, you seemed to say as you meandered your way through my eighth grade art class.

Ever since then, I have been unable to put you from my mind. I even met your far more glamourous sister, Hate, and though Hate and I had some good times we both realised that we were'nt meant to be. I was made for you Love, and all I could do was wait for you to come and warm my life. And my bed of course, though I wouldnt think of that seriously until I was sixteen.

In the years that followed I spent a lot of time with your family. Hate and I have always been close, but Lust, Desperation and Insanity all came to play. And we had fun, though not always the kind we thought we would.

Can I tell you a secret Love? Every time one of your siblings came to me, I thought it was you. I thought you had found me at last. But then I would wake up one morning and realise that there was only the slightest of family resemblances, or that your evil uncle Alcohol had been playing games with my mind again.

But now Love, you are here... and you're not... cool. You are calm and stable and warm and comfort. Where are the wars? And the plagues? The asteroids that are deflected by the power of love? Cant I at least have a songbird that can tweet out 'Strangers in the Night'? Surely people dont kill each other and start wars because otherwise they would have to read the paper alone in bed in the morning?

Or do they?

You have bewildered me again Love. But just you wait. I'll outfox you yet.

Sincerely,
The Dragon

Dont read this post if you have never had a girlfriend

I have come to the conclusion, that I have never really loved anyone except myself, and I suppose my parents. The boys have come and gone, and yes there have been quite a few, but in all honesty, I never actually loved any of them. They were amusing and diverting and served one or more of numerous purposes (purposi?) and when they stopped being useful or fun I 'realised' that I no longer loved them, explained the situation as gently as I could and moved on.

If you are thinking 'bitch', then yes, you're quite right. I really was.

Ooh very clever, you have caught onto the 'was' bit! My life has changed a great deal since the advent of Blue nearly eight months ago. I know we all have ideas of how we will love, and who we will love and what kind of relationship we should have, but we really shouldnt bother. There will come a person who will simply make anything but themselves unimportant, and you will agree to whatever, because the warm bubbly feeling you get when you hear them say they love you is illegal to induce in any other way.

Strangely enough though, this post is not about the joys of love. I havent become that much of a pink puff ball, thank you very much. This post is about unhappiness, because with love and happiness comes hate and unhappiness. Its a rule, and you cant change it.

Insecurity. It is such a bitter word. I am faced with a past, that haunts me. If it was my past that haunted me i could still deal with it, but when the past that haunts you belongs to someone else its all you can do to just make sense of what it is that is making you so damn miserable.

I had a wonderful uncle who gave me the gift of sexual fear when I was very young, but its never been a problem until now. I curse him everyday, because the man has given me so much baggage that I can only dimly see the reason behind my raving mania, explainig to someone else is near impossible. When it comes to sex and love, and the way the two combine, there is such a mess of memory and hate and anger and fear and inadequacy in my head, that I become, well, borderline insane.

As a result, any mention of Blue's past exploits (and unfortunately for me, there are a lot of them) and I feel like I imagine a beer can must when some drunk man crushes it against his head. I deflate, I am crushed, I lose all former shape and huddle inside myself in puddle of what i was ten minutes ago.

I am not a possesive person, but the kind of rage and hate I am confronted with in these moments is paralysing. And i know that Blue doesnt understand. Its mostly because Blue doesnt know.

Ah forgive my lengthy ramblings. I love and I am loved. The rest can be swept under a carpet.

With this ring, I thee wed…

So marriage. I can’t say that I have spent too much time thinking about the institution. It’s always been there obviously, at the back of my mind, I am after all a good Indian girl and subject to the strings of the stereotype. Not too long ago however, I made up my mind never to get married. I had discovered much to my delight that I fell in and out of love every three months or so, and being perfectly content with the idea of doing it for the rest of my life I happily told the universe that love and marriage were not for me. I could not in all honesty imagine finding someone I could love forever, and so marriage seemed a rather stupid plan. And in view of all the horrible marriages I had seen erupt all over the place, it seemed like a stupid idea to even believe that you could love someone forever. I was saved from the terrifying trap that so many had fallen victim to, oh great joy!!

Right, so in this context, I have been rather solidly buggered. I have now been madly in love with the most unlikely man for seven months and counting, and instead of dying down, I appear to be showing rather alarming signs of falling even more in love with him. It’s terrible. There is nothing worse than being un-cynicised by life. You feel so profoundly stupid and generally childlike. I keep waiting for something to happen and for the rapidly diminishing cynic in me to jump up and say “AHA! I was right after all!”

Which brings us back to the original point of marriage. Once the subject was broached and I got over the initial barf reflex, I have discovered much to my surprise that not only do I want to get married, I have ideas about it. About what I’m going to wear and who I will invite and what is going to be served at which ceremony. Oh yes that’s right, I apparently want ceremonies. In plural. Where did I develop these horrible thoughts from? I have no recollection of ever consciously thinking about it. When did my traitorous girly mind form these plans, and how did it do so without telling ME?

Marriage, the life and not the day, isn’t terribly unappealing either, though that’s possibly because I am already living like I’m married to this man. I wash his underwear and he takes days off from work to look after me when I’m sick. It’s wonderfully comforting, and I wonder if could go back to my hit and run love affairs. It seems the guy who devised this whole ‘couple’ idea knew what he was doing. I recommend true love and mushiness to everyone! Go out and find someone you can cuddle and will respond when you refer to them as ‘Snugglybuns’ and Pookiepoo’. It’s surprisingly fun.

Introspection

Ah, the smell of obsession.

Not sadly, the perfume, but the actual emotion. I am drowning in it today,its powerful fragrance complemented by hints of jealousy, insecurity and just a dribble of yearning. What is it about this man?

I light another cigarrette, gaze up at the darkening sky from the thriteenth floor of my glass tower. How is it possible, that I have so little faith in a man who has done nothing to undermine it.

THe kites that are my guardians scream above me, their claws outstretched as they race towards a demon that swirled above my head. They rip it to shreds and I watch chunks of fears rain down on the cars below. I breathe in. Not smoke but air. It must be me.

The breeze blows across my face and I realise I am asking too much of a man who has given me everything. Breathe in. I know how he feels, even if he doesnt say it all the time. Even if he doesnt look at me the way I think he should. I need to stop thinking.

The kite screams again and I feel lighter. I walk back inside amidst a shower of broken fears and a dying terror that I might still lose him. The kites will scream again tomorrow.

Madness

Can you love like you did at sixteen? Or even eighteen?

I remember watching an episode of Ally Mcbeal (yes i know, just let it go for now) where she talks about how as men grow older, past their teens and into real adulthood, they lose the ability to love passionately, and uninhibitedly. Everything they feel is more mature and tempered with reality and responsibility. I've nevr been sure about how accurate this theory is, but I do know from my own experiences, that I dont feel as all consumingly as I did when I was sixteen.

There are of course problems with feeling so intensely, but honestly, who doesnt want to be loved like that? Now, in my early twenties, Im madly in love with someone who is in his early thirties. I have a much better grasp on my own emotions, and I'm no longer as psychotic as I used to be. But, neither is he. And as he has had so much more practise at being in control, I cant help but feel a vague longing for the madness that I remember from the love of other men who were still in the middle of growing up.

More importantly, and certainly more distressingly, I feel incredibly left out when it comes to his youth. when he speaks to me of women he loved when he was eighteen, women who are still a part of his life, women who he is still very fond of, I see in him the madness that I know is missing from his feelings for me. I dont think he is in love with anyone else, and I know that the reasons his previous relationships didnt work out were solid, and he has no desire to be with anyone but me, But bloody hell I wish he could love me like he loved them.

Its like there was this whole other man, who I will never know, never get to enjoy, never get to hate and never be loved by, who exists in the past tense but continues to haunt the present. We are so fatally stable, so committed to each other at such a fundamental level that in some sense there is no excitement left between us. The madness I have had with men before him, both the insane joy and the insane grief have become duller, less extreme, pastel.

He appears to be beyond such frivolity, but I know I am not. I want him as the man he was before he became mine, and I want to feel in the bright colours I used to. I can find it somewhere else obviously, but in truth I want him. I want to hvae some part to play in who is going to become, to give him the memories of insanity that we both have with other people.

I want, to put it simply to be drowning in the madness once again.

Happy New Ears to you all!

So the eventful year of 2007 is over. What a strange, surprising, unpredictable and unusual 365 days it has been.

I shall at some point do a recap, but for now my apologies for irregularity, when the recap does emerge it will explain much.

Love and kisses to you all, I hope your new year is as full of giggles as possible without the involvement of muscular people and padded rooms.