Illusory Reality

Love…that messy business which brings us close together and tears us apart has sucked the life out of me. I can feel it in between my rib cage somewhere behind that organ that pumps life into my body, and it twists and turns and beats its broken bits against my insides reminding me that I am completely vulnerable to its vices. Some would call it sadness or melancholy. Others might say its depression and all the unsavory feelings that go along with it. But in my mind love displays so many sides of its character that it is all of these and more wrapped up in one all-encompassing little package. It has a mind of its own and a desire to wreak havoc on unsuspecting hearts.  And it burrows into my body with a ferocious voracity, trying to eat away at my strength. I have no peace in love, and none of that sense of calm which is supposed to manifest itself with good and honest things, because earthly love is a deceiver of sorts. It cannot be what it was designed to be. Perfect love, on the other hand, is something entirely different and only comes from one source. And we as humans foolishly try and simulate it with each other like we know what we are doing, but we always fall short no matter how hard we try. As always we try and become our own masters and fail over and over and over and over….

Its simulacra, an illusion; a figments of our imaginations. We start out as babies without the knowledge of the evil infestation that occurs in our natures. Where we were once ignorant of ourselves there becomes a certain realization that reality is what we make of it. It is in the stories we read, the shows we watch, the smiley faced beautiful people on the billboards who stare passionately into one another’s eyes. It’s what your mother tells you, and what your partners show you. And pretty soon this little fledgling creature that resided so innocently inside you begins to grow into a monster, fed by all of the nonsense you take in. And no matter how hard you try to stifle it the damn thing keeps on putting pressure against your insides, squeezing your resolve to death. You fight as long as you can, wrestle with it, cry over it, stomp that sucker right into the ground with sheer force of will. Until one day you wake up with your head in your hands and realize that you have been defeated, and struck down violently with a torrent of feelings all associated with that creature sitting stubbornly on its thrown…love.

It is a drug of immeasurable strength for everyone. Even the most cold hearted of people assume they know what it’s about and are subject to its power. There are the moments of simulated bliss that occur with love and make you feel like you could literally fly off the surface of the earth and touch the sky. I have been high with love, drunk with love, mindless in love and all of the cliché phrases that people have created to show just how addictive it really is. There were times when I believed that I was super human because of love. I literally could do anything and be anything and go about my life like I was walking on air because of this new found thing I’d discovered. At that point I literally felt it skipping gleefully around inside me, dancing with delight and planting little pleasures into my head. It would come alive when I heard certain songs, and produce all kinds of artistic works that would pour out of my mind in tidal waves. I guess you could say the good times make a fabulous muse out of love. It showed me the world in a perfect rosey hue, and I longed to feel it pulsing with life and touching every part of me from my fingertips to the very ends of my toes. Like most drugs it possesses an amazing sense of magic at first…and like most drugs in wears off and you are left with this thing all alone and unrequited.

These days my heart has become completely infected with it, but unfortunately for me it’s brought along a couple friends to join the party. There is bitterness and anger, both of which keep quiet stewing in their own juices until the most inopportune moments when they explode and cause a fury of feeling. They are best friends with chaos who likes to cloud my judgment and make it seem like I will never be free of this ailment no matter what I do.

Then there is worry. It absolutely won’t stop treading back and forth across my stomach to give me a moments rest. Way back in the good times worry went by a different name, “Butterflies,” and appeared during the very highest peaks of elation. I welcomed it then, but now it just makes me feel sick all the time.

 And lastly there is hope which is perhaps the cruelest of the crowd. It sits there timid and unassuming wrapped in a tiny veil of light among the gloom. Hope is one of those things which is the most deeply motivated to change in response to the actions of others. With me it only takes a word or two to set it off, and there I am hoping things will change, hoping for the future, hoping to recover that high I once felt.  Or it could go the other route and steadily grow dimmer until there is nothing but a tiny burning ember in the dark recesses of me. It never fully goes out but it never fully recovers either.

I am a victim of love just as much as anyone else and yet I feel like I am a uniquely tragic case. I suppose we all feel that way which is part of the problem. No one wants to share their broken and bruised hearts anymore. No one wants to take what has been mutated and distorted and make it right again. We would all rather hide away with the pieces of ourselves tightly locked behind a bunch of nasty feelings. It’s like we all have our own array of soldiers somewhere inside our souls standing watch in case someone comes and tries to correct the problem.

Perhaps love isn’t the problem at all. Sometimes I sit back and I listen to it whimpering pitifully inside of me, and I realize that love is just as much as victim of this world as I am. We need each other just to get by. Like two old battle scarred friends who have been there together and seen it all, and can look back and tell old war stories. We both know what it means to be lost and found, misused and misguided, slaves and vagabonds. Love knows what it means to be manipulated by unseen evils as much as I do. I cannot see my nature, but I know it exists to do me harm. And at the same time, love knows as much as I do the Author and Finisher of all things. It is aware of the One who created everything, and the perfect model by which it was created to reflect. In knowing this we both share a bond that cannot be broken no matter how many paths we tread that ultimately lead to nowhere. Perhaps one day love will make sense to me. As for now, I simply hope that this day will come quickly while I wait in love and human brokenness and wonder about the mess I am in and how to survive it.