To Be Or Not To Be.. Ouch!

In view of my patchy past with relationships and my recent altercations with romance and all things which are supposed to bring comfort and happiness (as opposed to discomfort and hopelessness), I have finally resolved to face a personal demon which has been with me now for about twenty seven years. From today I am faced with the deepest, most fundamental life-defining choice of whether to continue in my pursuit of love, and find a way to cope within my continuing state of emotional disarray, or to turn my back on the search for love and look to something else to fill the gap.

It is an unfortunate and inescapable fact in this repeatedly ironic life of mine that I am a natural romantic, so you will understand when I say that this looming impasse is a painfully difficult and heartbreaking one for me to resolve – the hardest I have ever confronted, and in view of the definitive resolution I am looking for this time, the hardest of its kind bar none. I find myself here because I firmly believe that everybody surrounding me (and not least of all myself) have the right to live without my mood swings. All the chaos running around inside me is quite simply making my life a living nightmare, and by association it is making me a day-to-day pain in the arse to live with. I know this. It may even come as a surprise to some of those suffering around me to know that I know this. I wasn’t always like this. The cruelty to be found in womankind, my world and the passage of time has conspired to put me where I now find myself. I suppose I first have to unravel the situation – I believe that ‘dissemination before understanding’ is the traditional technique..

In spite of my contemplation over shunning romance I have to concede that the one thing which is preventing me from letting it all go without a fight is the certain knowledge that a life without love isn’t a real life - it’s merely a state of existence, no matter how many counter arguments I read which say that love is something which you don’t truly gain from simply having a woman/man in your life. I can see where they’re coming from, but on the whole they are also wrong. If you have someone in your life and you do both truly love one another then each person in that loving relationship will reflect the other’s joy and a sustained, loving symbiosis will result, at least until one person in the union loses either their sense of that love or life itself. The inspiration of love is also a profound thing, which by its mere existence can foster better behaviour and greater achievement in both giver and recipient. I can’t imagine a happier state of being. Of course life has it’s contradictions to contend with – I think most people tussle with my personal favourite which states that unless you have money your options are limited, but in order to make that money you instead have to spend your playtime working. There is a relevant old adage to contemplate which lies in a similarly frustrating vein - ‘a watched pot never boils’. This is definitely the case in the search for love, and I can even say, to extend the metaphor, that I would quite happily take a joyful life which passes quickly over an eternity of misery.

Then there is the argument which states that you cannot love anyone else until you can first learn to love yourself. I can see the validity to this as well, and in this there is some truth. If you are caught up in a situation which leaves you feeling anything from having no real opinion of your self-worth, through to a real venomous self-loathing then this is inevitably going to show itself outwardly in a literal or abstract way. Any possible partner will likely sense this, and in the case of the latter it would be a brave but very worthy person who persevered through that kind of barrier to reach and heal the afflicted individual - I do think though that it would indeed be a very rare love, and worthier than most of a savagely tight grasp by both parties. At the moment I think I stand in the former camp – I have no real opinion of feeling about myself one way or another. I seem to be stuck in a form of suffocating nothingness – a day to day blur of faces that seem to reflect a similar weariness. In this place my heart simply refuses to feel, and when I should be seizing the day and reaching out to beautiful people and trying to heal, I find myself simply dying instead. I don’t actually hate myself – I got past that one a while ago. It took a little time before I realised that I was allowing myself to be pigeon-holed and then trying to accept that pigeon hole, rather than taking the third option and forcing people to accept me for who I am, and knowing that my opinions and outlooks really are as valid as the next person. Damn everyone in the past who tried to make me feel otherwise. No, self-loathing isn’t an issue. My quandary is a race against time, and it is the thought that I might find myself reflecting with sadness on a loveless life many years from now which fills me with a horror, and which is making me counterproductively unbearable in the present. The most recent hurt I have had to contend with is a situation involving unrequited emotion. For any of you yet to experience this one, do yourself a favour and try to avoid it in the first place – PLEASE, PLEASE trust me on this one. As inspiration for avoidance let me tell you it simply ISN’T possible to overcome it – not if you really feel it. It’s like any irreparable injury, you just have to learn to live with it. In double fact, this may have been the catalyst for putting me in the position of considering alternatives to love.


After all of the above I’m sure you can understand why I have little patience for pointless celebrity romance gossip devoid of any real meaning, or people who continually abuse each other in relationships – to say nothing of those who seem to treat my nameless unrequited one with a casual attitude.


So, from all this, what do we have? I think the real big question at the heart of all this is quite obvious to me now - “how does one overcome the absence of another’s loving inspiration, create your own inspiration and bring order to emotional chaos?”. No small undertaking - can it really be done? Assuming I elect instead to prolong my search for love, surely I will need to find some kind of inner happiness before any sane woman will touch me with a barge pole? One person reading this will probably think this the heaviest blog yet. Do you know, honestly after all this, I just don’t know what to think.. I am so tired of feeling alone. Aren't we all? lol. Maybe I shouldn't be trying to resolve anything in my present condition!? Humph..

I shall have to have a good think about this when I’ve got some more strength for it, and get back to you all when I do.. As with other blogs, I welcome any sensible comments..

Peace