As if it can save you. As if the fragility of romantic love can withstand the cloying pressure of being the only source of happiness, of health. Trust me, it can not bear that kind of weight. Romantic love wants tender ministrations, it needs seeing to, watching over, particular and detailed negotiations. It can not thrive in darkness, it can not sustain when it is only drawn on and never replenished. It will be bled dry, left sere and cracked beyond repair. It is so temperamental, unpredictable, a river which alternately floods its banks and is reduced to a trickle, if there at all. There is no resting state, no compromise. It can not save you for it is always asking to be saved.
So, certainly, it has been wonderful to fall in love, it has even felt transformative along the way. But in the face of what I perceive to be irretrievable sadness in me, when all I desire is silence and stillness, the entity that we have created between us, that draws its own breath, it can not be asked to stop breathing, to put aside its own insatiable hungers and thirsts and look only outwards. It will always be greedy.
3 comments:
Just listening to a CBC Ideas podcast on the Fool something-or-other...
Apparently the Science is in--depressives have a more accurate and realistic view of the world.
I have lately been thinking a great deal about how unrealistic it is to expect one person, one relationship, to meet all of our needs. How the pressure of having to do so can threaten to break the bond of romantic love, especially when it is in the fragile state of learning how to weave the delicate threads of each of you together.
Your first paragraph slayed me. Yes, to that thing that is created being its own being, requiring everything you each need, and then some.
I love the line "always asking to be saved". Honest. Sounds like parenting, the relentless care. We don't get quiet or silence with a child, rarely. But in the end, its worth it. I wonder if the same can be said for this love. Hm.
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