He said:
It lay between us on the table. I put my hand on it. I look at her. She hunches her shoulders. I lift it, point it at her for a minute, then put it to my forehead. She gets crazy, I get crazy. "What's it gonna be?" Her hands tear at the bandages on her wrist, mouth droops in a half crescent frown, tears stream down her cheek. I cock it. The clicking sound makes her gasp. I repeat the question slowly, closing my eyes. I open them when the door slams shut. Suicidal break ups are a relationship hazard, but I draw the line at blood in my bath tub. Fight fire with fire, show her you can do crazy too.
She said:
There was this boy, and he fell for a girl. And they fell madly, passionately in love and lived happily every after. Yeah right.
It lay between us on the table. I put my hand on it. I look at her. She hunches her shoulders. I lift it, point it at her for a minute, then put it to my forehead. She gets crazy, I get crazy. "What's it gonna be?" Her hands tear at the bandages on her wrist, mouth droops in a half crescent frown, tears stream down her cheek. I cock it. The clicking sound makes her gasp. I repeat the question slowly, closing my eyes. I open them when the door slams shut. Suicidal break ups are a relationship hazard, but I draw the line at blood in my bath tub. Fight fire with fire, show her you can do crazy too.
She said:
There was this boy, and he fell for a girl. And they fell madly, passionately in love and lived happily every after. Yeah right.
I'm often labeled the cynic among my friends, so much so that whenever I hear of a couple getting married, I immediately place my wager on how long it will last before the divorce papers are served. It's not that I don't believe in marriage - on the contrary. I have the utmost faith in the institution - even when most do not.
It's more that I don't really believe in love. At least, not the way the pop songs tell it. All that I can't breathe without you, you're the only thing I need and want, my heart skips a beat when you walk into the room stuff.
The problem is most people can't distinguish between ego and heart.
Case in point: You spot someone across the room, you get butterflies, (biology so far) you walk over, you get ignored. Wow, you're experiencing butterflies and pain - you MUST be in love. Now you have a story to tell (ego) and the fight for the will they/won't they love me back? (more ego) is all just one big self-inflicted drama to make you feel better about yourself (ego rears its head again).
What great love story begins and ends with 'we met, we quite liked each other and it made sense to get it on'? Other than the lyrics to Jagged Edge's Let's Get Marred (we ain't gettin any younger so we might as well do it) I can't think of any.
You know why? Cos those stories aren't profitable. The smart way to make money, as all advertisers and Hollywood producers have discovered, is to present an impossible ideal and convince people parting with their cash might just bring them one step closer to their dream - which is much easier than facing reality.
And the irony? It never works! Yet we all continue to do it.
So then, assuming, you've spotted your mate, fallen in love, had your struggle and actually made it through the wedding, you're settling into married life and one day you wake up and the struggle has gone. There is no more drama, there is just another person with annoying habits you have to share your life with and make allowances for. Now you have everything you want. The ego is no longer satisfied, the ego wants more, it needs fuel. It goes looking for a new mission, maybe you cheat, maybe you don't. But you convince yourself the love (which was always just ego) has died, so it must be a problem with the relationship rather than you, it must have been a mistake, it must have been wrong.
You could try and revive the bond, but God, that just seems like such hard work and love is supposed to be easy and breezy and pretty - like in that movie you paid $15 to watch.
And just like that, it's over....
That kind of love - I can do without.
I prefer a different kind. The strong resilient quiet kind that no one even wants to hear about, the boring kind that makes you want to fall asleep. The unglamorous kind of love that is lacking in certainty and raises questions about who you are and who you want to be. The kind that involves chipping away at yourself to make room for someone else. The kind that has you putting the toothpaste cap back on every morning, only to find it annoyingly open again at night.
The secret to love that no one ever tells you is this: you just stay. No matter what...you stay. Politely, unequivocally, like you don't have a choice.
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