My break-up with Love

I read a story recently about a guy who went to the store to buy his wife flowers. On reaching the counter, he discovered he didn't have enough money. So he gave the cashier his credit card. After swiping it, the cashier said to him in her loudest,most patronizing voice "Sir, your card has no money in it." He was confused, tears were welling up. He was humiliated. The guy behind him, moved by the scene he was watching, told him to stay put, he thought he had $10 in the car. He ran back with the money in hand and paid for the flowers. The man with the flowers turned with a grateful smile. "I hope when your wife passes on, you may pass on with her. My wife died 15 years ago and today is meant to be our anniversary. I miss her dearly. These flowers are for her."

We hear these stories and our hearts go 'awww! That is so sweet' and it is but more than that, it is extremely sad. It is a story of a broken heart. A pain that will only be healed in death. And I think there can be nothing worse than knowing you may never heal. Never forget. Some guy once described heart break as a feeling as if someone is continuously stabbing you in the heart. I couldn't help but think, how inadequate that description was. Heartbreak was not like being stabbed in the heart. It was more like being buried alive in a coffin you could never get out off. You can't breath but you are still alive. You scream but no one can hear you. You are totally alone, in your pain, in your shame, in your tears. You can never share it with anyone. My biggest problem with it is, much as you want to hide under your bed and wait for the angel of death to take you away, you can't. It's not a disease, you don't get a doctor to write you a note, you continue going to work, you continue attending parties. Everyone expects you to move on. I'm sure if I go through some experiences, I might discover other experiences that could possibly be worse, than getting your heart torn out, but this in my opinion is the complete worst. On Sunday, there I am seated in church, quietly at my usual corner, when the pastor shouts "Its time to let go." and I thought, maybe it really is time for me to let go. It's time for me to let go of love. I have waited for this thing that is never coming. Generally in life, if you know your train has been cancelled, you don't sit around hoping the station got the details wrong, you don't board another train and hope it'll eventually start heading to your destination, you pick up your stuff and you go home and rethink your travel plans. But unfortunately in love, we keep boarding the wrong trains in the hope of eventually catching the right one. And for most of us, we do end up boarding the right train, most times by mistake. But for some, you just keep getting dropped off at the wrong destination, and sometimes, you get lost and you can't seem to find your way back home.

I have boarded the wrong train severally but I have boarded the love train exactly once in my life and I have gotten heart broken exactly once. I did test the waters before and after that but it wasn't the same. My mother, the true believer of love, keeps pushing for another try. Not all the time like when I was younger, but every so often, she will ask "I haven't seen anyone here in a while." or "what happened to so and so". I used to give long winded explanations before with illustrations of mangoes in a supermarket and coffee beans in a farm and such but now I just smile and walk away. But I can understand her concern. She was one of those women who found love early in life. Almost like a silly sitcom. She wouldn't understand this disillusion I have. She would push for one more try. She has a man who loves her and I will always be glad for that. She was made for it, she thrives at it. Her man pursued her through thieves, robbers and insane relatives and that's what love should be. Insane and funny and forever. If I am ever to get back together with love, that is what I need it to be. Insane and funny and forever. Otherwise, I am walking away from the mediocrity that has been my love life so far.

I do believe, love is useless if you can't truly become those women we, single women, love to hate, if you don't turn a bit psycho and annoying and irrational. I was once. He wasn't. So we amicably went our separate ways. Him, to look for someone who would turn him into a psycho and me, to lick the wounds of my broken heart and quietly piece together my life. But that was years ago. I have wanted to feel like that again with someone who felt the same way about me but there has been no real prospect of that happening. Not even when he came back and left again. It just isn't the same. So, now I'm letting go. I'm tucking in my heart in the closet and moving on. There have been one or two declarations of the lust nature, but I don't want those ones. Those ones just leave you bitter and cold on the inside. I needed true declarations. A truly motivated kind of love. A love that I have since given up on.

This wasn't as rush a decision as I'm putting it. I have thought about it for years. Yes, years. I have even patiently waited and 'put myself out there' and there's been no real bite. No real attempt by this love thing to show that it was still interested. So I am starting to think that maybe God has a different plan for me. Maybe this love thing isn't for me. Maybe I was just meant to follow a different path. Do other things and be great at that but my desire to find 'the one' is just delaying that. Maybe what's delaying this thing called love is not my lack of mid-calf decent skirts and my love for heavy metal and tattoos. Maybe, just maybe, all me and love were meant to be was friends. Old friends who tell wild and inappropriate stories about each other to strangers.

Now I am putting it on the shelf. I am breaking up with it for breaking my hopeful heart. For making me feel intense pain after feeling intense joy. I am breaking up with it because it has adamantly refused to fight for me, the way I thought I had fought for it. It has refused to sit by me when I was sick and celebrate with me when life started falling into place. It is not painful or even sad. It is more like a quiet sigh in the wind. I may never get to sit on that balcony giggling at the stupidity of another human being, I may have to be content with buying my own birthday cake and plan my own surprise parties....but its ok. I get to celebrate with the others whom it may touch. I get to sing their songs and dance in their glow. I get to experience albeit from a far, what it would have been like had my life turned out differently. I will occasionally blame love when my life becomes hard but it will never hold any truth because we now know, me and love, though we had some terrific moments in the past, that is what it will always be. A terrific moment, in the past.