The Fragility Of Love - The Reflections Of A Romantic
Friday, July 26th, 2002
We are an intense race of explorers.  We set out into the universe, trying to conquer people, claim distant lands and discover tools which will make life easier and in our quests, we think that the discoveries we make will be our greatest accomplishments.  Often, however, we are saddened into exhaustion because while we seem to make headway into the physical and material world, we end up knowing as little about ourselves as when we began.  The more we discover, the less we really know.
This sounds like an ominous beginning and possibly a little too dramatic, but for me, it leads me into my observations in the past few weeks.  I sometimes can connect the smaller pictures of my daily life, the people around me, the events that occur and what I see and if I'm lucky, the pieces of these smaller pictures create a mosaic of the thoughts that constantly circle my heart and my mind.  These past few weeks are definitely the beginning of a mosaic and that beautiful mosaic is love.
Almost three weeks ago, the person I was seeing broke up with me and I didn't react in the typical mode.  I didn't cry and I didn't get really mad.  It just happened.  I'm not sure why my emotions were so flat, as is not the usual case with me, but somehow I got through the situation with a sense of calm.  True, I did set boundaries with him, but my state of being was different, almost reserved.  The world around me, however was not as calm or balanced at all and now a few weeks after my break-up and suddenly I am regaining some insight into the world again, something that hasn't happened to me for a while.  I am seeing the light, yes I grin at that, because it seems the ultimate of cliches, but dammit they are my cliches.
I was sitting in a bar tonight, The Toolbox, amongst the wooden patio in the back, infamous for its raunchy affairs and I started to feel my emotional being taking in the many emotions of the people, mostly friends, around me.  As I did this, I began reflecting on the emotional situations that occurred in the past two weeks and realized that I had been doing it for a while.  It was mostly set off this evening by the return of an old friend with whom I had feelings for then and now and my reserve on resuming any form of relationship beyond friendship.  Tonight I saw that side of him again, but I was confident in what I felt, being the state of ourselves being in the same exact place as before, but only us grown-up more, a place I didn't want to go again.
Then I began reflecting on my friends around me.  One friend is stuck between the world of multiple partners and the possibility of one single person he loves.  Another friend is feeling the tinges of love in his life with uncertainty that he has never felt from his heart.  The list continues to old flames who have moved on in their lives to unchartered waters of relationships, both now and hoping, the inevitable pangs of forbidden love between a partnered person and the person he really cares for, the hurt of an open-relationship that is suffering its problems, a pair on the road to commitment with all its traps and hurdles, a pair playing a new game which could prove costly or save them both in the same boat, a pair trapped in the differences that separate them and the leading to dangers in increasing the gap, the journey of one into the world that he gave up for someone else in the past only to rediscover its joys, the end of a relationship and the long road ahead into the single world.  The list goes on and for the first time in a long time, I was feeling their emotions around.
I was amazingly receptive tonight to all of these people around me and what I had felt during the past two weeks that it sent shivers through me and at the same time, I felt oddly at home, at peace.
(Continued July 30th) I think sometimes I was feeling overwhelmed by everyone as well as my own issues that I wasn't getting the right signals.  Now with this night, the world seemed a little more in sync.
What I find interesting in my evening of sensing and discovery is that it all relates to love between two people and the challenges that have become obviously viewed by so many people.  It almost seemed as if no two people had the same problem or were in the same stage of love, creating an almost uniqueness in their stories.  However, what was most interesting to me was that each story contained the same dilemma, same fear, same inner working that seems to capture all of us: the fragility of love.
The fragility of love is almost indisputable.  We fall for someone and then one after another walls fall as well.  Most times however, we just keep running into the wall until we break it down or we quit and give up and look for something new to break.  Every time we run into that wall, we hit it a little harder and we hurt ourselves so that the next time we run into another wall, we get hurt just a little more and want to throw in the towel just a little quicker.
I'm the last to complain about this system as I am a complete perpetuator of it, but it is so hard to feel that fragility all around you and still feel your own.  This isn't just a gay thing either, I sense it wherever I am.  It makes me wonder how something that should be the strongest force in the world can be so easy to break.  Love is this amazing energy that keeps us going and yet we fear it like it were the black plague because we don't understand it well enough to control it, but somehow we know enough to make us think we know it better.
So why do we fall in love?  Why do we put ourselves through this torture?  Some days I have to wonder if maybe we all strive towards hopeless goals of that perfect image of how we feel love will really be like.  I know I look around me for images, but lately I see so much insecurity in ourselves and our relationships that I just want to say single.  That was my goal till the end of September.  I am going to stay single come hell or high water.  I will avoid temptations, I will avoid men and walk away and not think how cute they are or that they really do sound interesting.  I'm finding its not that easy.
Every time I try to do this impossible dream of just remaining solo for just a little while, I get caught in the game of fragility.  Maybe I'm being a glutton for punishment, but there has to be more out there when it comes to love.  Because behind that punishment, that reality of 99% of our relationships not working, I still think the next guy will be the one.  It's stupid what we put ourselves through, but somehow that almost ridiculous thought that this one will work and that we'll be happy for the rest of our natural born lives keeps us going.  Yeah I'm staying single, but I tell you, I don't think I can hold on until the end of September.  I almost fell off the wagon once at the beginning of July and I'm on my way to the Toolbox, the scene of my love watch before, for another evening tomorrow of looking at more guys that might not work, but well, we'll give it a thought at least.
Love is fragile and that's a reality.  It is a force which we can easily take for granted and a force which we can lose at the drop of a hat because we are sometimes too stupid to see it.  Sometimes we lose it on purpose and sometimes it disappears over years because we weren't really watching it that well.  That said though, it is also what makes a bad day better, a cloudy day just a little sunnier and even sometimes it makes the whole thing worth the adventure.  Love may be a fragile thing to keep a hold of, but at the end of the day, when two people look at each other and start to realize how easily it can break does it become stronger.  In that way, you cannot help but love the feeling of love and it makes waking up the next day thinking that maybe it's not so fragile after all, I just have to see how strong it really can be.  It's amazing how close along the line strength and fragility are.  They are as close as two eyes connecting with each other in the backyard patio on hot summer night.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow.