"LOVE" you anymore

Hardly stir when you sleep,
There's a piece inside your mind, inside your dream,
Though there's two that lie beneath these sheets,
Might as well be three with all the space between.
Sweetheart, behind the eyes,
A different person, stranger lies,
Stay a while and creep towards the door,
I said I love you though I knew I didn't love you anymore….
~Matt Duke

So a couple of months ago I went to Adele’s free at noon at the WCL. The opening artist, Matt Duke, a local artist, another John Mayer in the making, was nothing but mediocre to say the least. However, I will give him credit where credit is due. The song ‘Love You Anymore’ hit me like a ton of bricks. The lyrics insist how easy it is to say I love you to someone, who actually you really don’t even love anymore. The song got me thinking back to my own personal relationships, love, and how ridiculously unfair but prevalent this actually is.

I remember after my first, and I can ((contently)) now say only, real love, break up, I was given the book “All About Love” by Bell Hooks. Hooks talks about the overuse of the word love and how it is just thrown around, diminishing its true meaning. The book goes about explaining the correct way to use the word love and how we need to make an effort to replenish the strength of the word. Again…just like EPIC, it has been basically destroyed. Yes, I am at fault for this destruction and I have never met someone who wasn’t.

Anyways, back to the lyrics of the song. I was absolutely positively upset with myself after hearing Duke sing this song. It brought me to tears. I thought to myself, this is horrible, how can someone say they love you, when really they are falling out of love with you? It’s just so incredibly hurtful. Yea, well, little did I think at that moment that I had recently done this for months and months with my last ex. I thought back to how every day and every night I told him that I loved him, when really, I knew, deep down he probably was the worst person ever in this world I could ever be with. Harsh? Sorry it’s the absolute truth, I always knew, but I just denied and denied it until it just became meaningless and truthfully just a bad habit. I was broken down into this person I did not even recognize, mostly from him, but hardly not my own fault as well. I was doing exactly what I had always said I would never do and I was completely ignoring all the advice I had ever given to any friend in a bad relationship. What the shit? So…I loved, I lost, and I learned.

This brings me to cathexis, or as Hook called it, cathexism. I cannot even begin to count how many conversations I have had with people, where cathexis was the charge in their relationship. Cathexis can be defined as, an “investment of energy: the concentration of a great deal of psychological and emotional energy on one particular person, thing, or idea.” I feel that so many of us confuse love with cathexis. We become so used to, or familiar, with a feeling, that we forget what it feels like to actually feel it for real.

I have explained time after time, to myself, and to my friends that love and abuse can NEVER co-exist. When using ‘abuse’ I not only (definitely) mean physical, but also, emotional, and psychological abuse. If a relationship, in any way, consists of abuse, love cannot exist. If you say to yourself, what am I doing, why can’t I leave (them), oh “its because I love (them),” well…you need to stop. It is unfair and it will never work.

I am so scattered on thoughts, and I can probably babble about this love ish topic for like a bazillion days, but its worthless. I have come to experience in the past couple of months, love in a completely different way and I am beginning to only accept the truest of forms. I have learned that to love someone, their best interest, and happiness, must always be of utmost importance to you. Absolutely positively NO exceptions. If you cannot become more aware of yourself, and display your desire for this person's happiness, then it is not love. Even if they don’t love you back, or if they are just a friend, etc, etc, it is okay to love them, it is alright to have these feelings and show emotions. Send them your light and love every time you think of them. Don’t be ashamed to feel. But please, please, please examine what love means to you, in your mind, the true meaning, and use it correctly and honestly!

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame

Shhhhhitttt…all this over some lyrics.