no man's land

Yesterday night Love Actually was on tv, and most of the people at my house and I ended up watching it. If you have never seen this movie, I highly recommend it. I mean, yeah, it's romantic and it has a lot of happy endings, but I like the way it treats love and romance. It's definitely not your cheesy chick flick type and it's worth a watch, trust me. Anyway, as the movie came to an end, I started thinking about all the stories in the movie, and how they all had one thing in common: happy ending or not, they were all painful in their own way. That's exactly what love is: painful, in a very heartwrenching sort of way. It doesn't matter what your story is, whether you're a kid who loves someone that doesn't even know their name, or a wife that finds out her husband has feelings for another woman, or even if you're the guy that falls in love with his portugese maid in the course of a month even though he don't understand a single thing she says, every single one of them is hurt, in some way or another. Fortunately, (or for our disgrace, depends on the perspective) our minds tend to shut out the ugly moments and enhance only the good ones. That's why we will always remember exactly how our stomach fluttered during that first kiss, or the way we melted whenever we looked into our loved one's eyes; every single detail, as insignificant as it was, is permanently etched in our brain. The bad things, on the other hand, loose importance with time, and once enough time have gone by, it gets harder to remember how you felt when the idiot didn't call, or when you find out you love him/her more than they love you, or when you realize your love is impossible. All it takes is a single glance, a brush of a hand, a smile, to wipe away all the bad memories and experiences, and to have you writhing in the agony of love once more.

So, why is it all human seek love, above anything else, when we know it's just going to take us into a spiral of depression and angst? Why are we surprised when our heart breaks, when a person rejects us, when we fall in love with an impossible? Shouldn't we expect it, a relationship where someone will love more than the other, all the cheating, the lying, the disappointment? Because, let's be honest, love is nice, yes, but not the majority of the time. Sure, those few moments can be so intense that they make it all worth your while, but they cannot make the rest disappear completely. Every love story is unique, yes, but in all love stories there is always heartbreak and pain. It can come in the form of anything, but it is present, and there is no avoiding it. Am I supposed to believe the pain is good for me? Does it make me a better, stronger person? I choose to believe it does. Call me a ridiculous optimist, but I cannot accept a life where all the pain is just for free, just so whoever is up there moving the strings of life has a jolly time. I acknowledge the pain, and I'm aware that no matter what, I will suffer, probably a lot. But I'm also aware that those few good moments, when you feel the rest of the world disappear, when you feel like you're dancing on cloud nine, can patch my heart right back up again, and I'm ready to face the world once more and search for that ambiguous, dodgy character that is love.