Burn It Down

I dropped my son off at the gym and I'm sitting in a McDonalds drinking that foul brown liquid I have become addicted to. I would have gone to the gym too but in ramping up my attendance at the gym yesterday, I pushed my body enough for a couple days recuperation. I still can't keep my arms up for any length of time.

Instead of bettering myself, I'll indulge myself with a snippet of words. I found this and have been enamored of it since. You see, while I post other quotes about love and longing, I have just started coming to a realization of how selfish love can be. It can hurt and sting. This can go for all parties. I know it might be something of which you have long been aware but I'm kind of new to this.

I've created a lot of new "friendships" on the web, and I've had to work out a lot of my feelings and thoughts with almost complete strangers before I unleash my thoughts on those closer, more present to me. I can't say I haven't made mistakes, but workings of the heart and mind are hard to express at times. Anyway, here it is.

How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn’t have any substance after all?

Like when you’ve split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. “Plenty more fish in the sea,” they’ll say, or “You’re better off without them,” or “Do you want some of these potato chips?” They never really understand, because they haven’t been there, every day, every hour. They don’t know the way things have been, the way that it’s made you, the way it has structured your world. They’ll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don’t understand the history, the background, don’t know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don’t know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone’s alone in their world, because everybody’s life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. 

Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down. 

~Michael Marshall Smith

 That last line. That last line puts it in such a blunt way. Love can be so powerful, so constructive. With it though is a power to destroy lives.

I don't have many other thoughts about it right now. I've had this quote for some days now, and I wanted to frame it properly. I don't think I can.

Love isn't simple. Perhaps it is if you married your first and only love, but what if you didn't? There was hurt involved there, for someone. What if there are divorces, children? More hurt and pain. As we age, the ripples spread wider, with greater effect.

Perhaps this is why people run on autopilot as they get older. They don't change their situations, their loves, hopes and dreams. Too much momentum. Too many to be scattered in their wake. Minimize the damage; don't turn left or right.

Does love accumulate, like snow? Or maybe it piles up like tinder so when it does burn down, it burns with a greater light?

Yeah, my random thoughts about this can take me wide afield. This is why I don't sleep very well. So many thoughts demanding to be thought.