Love and Lack Thereof
I have two good friends. There were engaged to be married. The plans for the marriage were vague at best. 2011 sometime. But it didn’t matter. They were together after all. Marriage later versus marriage much later didn’t really matter as long as they were together. Before getting engaged, they were a couple for years and years. They lived together. They were inseparable
I remember too when he proposed to her. It was a big public event and she had no clue. Of course, all of us in attendance knew. When she was singled out and he went down on one knee, the cheers were deafening There were screams, tears, clapping and hollering. It’s hard to top that kind of moment in a personal list of your most treasured memories: A perfectly executed marriage proposal.
But the months went on and they grew apart. It is 2011 now, but there is no more talk of marriage between them. They have since split up and he has come to live with me for a little. He is ever cheery and strong despite everything. But he’s quieter now. Almost like if he were to speak too loud it might shatter the invisible glass that holds back the tears.
She was the one who broke it off, and at first I was angry. But no one is to blame, really. Love is and always will be a mystery. Here in one moment, and gone the next without as much as a warning or farewell.
The thing is, sometimes relationships continue on even after the love has packed its things and moved on. Couples stay with one another hoping to find what they had lost, sometimes forever. Other times, couples think that there is love when there really isn’t any, like a well that will never be filled again. I was in a relationship which ran out of love once. There’s no other way to describe it other than this: It’s hard to let go even when you are certain there isn’t any hope. Maybe that’s what happened to my friends. The proposal was the feather that tipped the scale in one direction.
We’re taught that love, in it’s purest form, is everlasting. That once we find it, it will be the source of unlimited happiness. I still believe that to be true despite all that’s happened to me and my friends. But the perfection that is love is tainted by our own imperfect hands. We all make mistakes in life, we are taught. And it’s also true that we all make mistakes in love, no matter how pure that love may be.
That’s why when we love, we need to work at it. But even then, all the work in the world can’t fix something that isn’t there.
