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There was a time when the only kind of relationship I knew was the unhealthy kind.
Everyone has been hurt in love. Everyone past the age of adolescence has experienced love’s woes.
Society glorifies the agonies of love. Heartache and heartbreak, in novels and songs and movies and TV shows.
Growing up, I equated love with pain. I was trapped in this pattern, and I could not see a way out.
When I was younger, I thought that I had fallen “in love” twice. Each time, after a few short weeks of intense happiness, it would turn miserable. There would be so much pain, sorrow and mutual enmity.
Then I met C.
In the beginning, he, too, was another ghost in the box. But the fantasy is one that removes all flaws, and he was never a fantasy. He is a man with flaws, just as I am a woman with flaws.
I fell in love with him, and he fell in love with me.
What we have is not the unhealthy thing I was drawn to before. He has given me a divine, transcendent vision of love, more love than what I ever thought was possible.
I was once a huge skeptic, but he makes me feel almost… religious.
The way he meditates with me, and I fall so easily into unconsciousness.
The way he lifts my chin, firmly cups the back of my head with both hands, and kisses me a bit roughly.
The way he whispers to me in the dark — “Let go of your fear.”
Courage is the opposite of fear. To truly love, one must let go of the fear of pain and heartbreak.
He gave me the strength to be open and vulnerable. He healed my wounds, nursed me back to health.
We can be totally honest with each other without fear or apprehension. We can show each other our innermost thoughts and know we will be accepted.
People hear stories about my past and tell me that I love assholes, that can’t help myself but be attracted to them, and that I’m deluding myself when I say that I do not.
Not one to casually dismiss every critique that comes my way, I went into self-analysis mode.
While laying next to C, I quietly posed the question. “Do you think that I go for assholes?”
He took a moment to think before he answered.
He stroked my head with one hand and held me close to his chest with the other. Then he spoke in his slow, gentle voice.
“You… have always gone for the outcasts, the smart and emotionally damaged men. That kind of men can often turn abusive because they have a lot of pain.”
I nodded and closed my eyes against his chest.
“So you asked me if I think you went for assholes. No, I do not think that you do. You were drawn to those guys because you wanted to heal them.”
I wanted them to be sweet, to be loving. And they sometimes were. I wanted to give them my love so that they would be happy, because they seemed to be filled with so much sadness and pain.
Few others could understand this, but C understood. He pulled me closer to him, gathered my small hands against his. I smiled and brushed my lips against his cheeks.
He felt so right. It was a feeling I could not put into words.
I wanted to cry. But there was no need.
Your former notion that love required some component of misery reminded me of this quote from Vicky Cristina Barcelona:
“She had reluctantly accepted suffering as an inevitable component of deep passion, and was resigned to putting her feelings at risk. If you asked her what it was she was gambling her emotions on to win, she would not have been able to say.”