Cplow Esther,
I’m writing this email to you because every two months I find myself looking for your column page and seeing how many stories reflect me, reproach me or feel less alone and naive.
In reality, however, I am writing it to myself to tell myself that was I good.
I left someone who perhaps loved meCertainly he wanted to come to bed with me (and I with him, and, just as certainly, this was the only thing we had in common) but still once every two weeks.
I was good because after months I talked about what I felt, and to his “no” – if it had been a firm no, I would have appreciated. Always these “it’s not you, it’s me, you deserve better” balls – I didn’t ask for explanations.
I said thank you, I will miss you.
I got a “You too” and turned on my heel.
Only once was I weak, dear Esther. After a month I wrote him. Which didn’t change anything, but I missed it.
Again, “I miss you, too.”
But no car out of the garage to pick me up, no unlocked phone to drop a line or call.
And I cried a lot, a lot, because I recognize that he was good and that I fell for it, again. I still cry sometimes, like now, while I’m at work and there are people around talking about measurements, about forklifts, and I’m here remembering him hugging me.
Why more than messages, more than sex, I miss his hugs. Sometimes I would take the car and go to him just to say “hug me”.
But I’m good.
I’ll be good. I am I have been good many times in the past and I will be good again.
Thank you,
a hug to you
Ester Viola’s response
I read you and cry for you, dear A.
You are good and you were very good but between you and the prize for skill remains that question that we asked ourselves a thousand times, a thousand times a day, for a thousand days (when it went badly).
When will it pass?
I don’t want fortunes, blessings, pats on the back, I just want this question answered:
When.
Me.
Pass.
The classmate of my twenties was that question. So resilient, so triumphant. How I hated her.
But what questions does one have to avoid to get by? Too many. Who we are, where we go and when I pass.
Unrequited love: when does the pain go away?
Here we go again. Unrequited love. Paid little. So banal, so deadly. At least we know that we aren’t sick of nonsense when it happens. In Memoirs of Hadrian it is on the list of primary misfortunes.
“To keep man’s heroic virtues in exercise, there will always be a long series of real evils: death, old age, incurable illnesses, unrequited love”.
Is it so debilitating, the love that isn’t too reciprocated that ends?
Those who are out of the loop, the lucky ones who don’t know what it is, the titans who have been there and then forgot about it, laugh at you. You’re the idiot, they argue. Let the slave be freed from imaginary chains.
If it were easy. She shrugs, yes you’re right. It’s raining, it’ll clear up again but in the meantime we’ll get wet.
Love is theft, A. In exchange for a good three quarters of an hour above average, it takes our toll on us.
Not to mention that desperate helplessness of watching our sense of humor dry up when we’re in love. “Who I was” she evaporates. The best defenses we have are lost. The best self we have available throws itself into the ditch.
We already said that if requited love generally makes us selfish, unrequited love makes us terrible. Rejection breeds weakness, resentment, and self-pity in spades. And in this last stage, as invertebrate thinkers, there is nothing better to do than reflect. The disappointed person stays still and thinks. But do you know anyone who has recovered from immobility through reflection?
Unrequited love and humiliation
Let’s analyze the humiliation even further: rejected love is someone who gives you the certificate “thank you very much, you are secondary in my life”. That’s why you’re trying to understand.
Not everything, no. Two things should be understood.
Where did I go wrong, the first one. And how could it be, the second.
It’s a tiring Monday but it only takes two minutes and we still have a few free lines left.
Where did I go wrong? Nowhere.
How could it be? A stable relationship, like many others, at times not bad, other times it’s better. This would be the masterpiece of reciprocated love. The pendulum between being bored as a couple and being happy to be bored as a couple, what’s in between is called a stable couple.
All I know about unrequited love is that every “but it’s special!” of people who didn’t want me, the rest of the world responded with chants of “look closer, he’s an idiot”. And they were always, always right.
It must be said that these – counting on the shortage of males in circulation – have never been so powerful. See how comfortable you feel with these too. Imagine if they take the car and run somewhere out of some instinct of good behavior. Only the financial police remained capable of generating certain moods and reactions.
Remedies for you then. Stay and limp at home (discreetly) until it passes or wander and meet other people, distract yourself until it passes. According to physical propensity.
Then a lot will depend on the athlete’s motivation: for example, never forget that the healing of love for a loved one is of the same substance as finding another person, receiving an interested message from the ex and telling yourself “how long am I waiting for this idiot”.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED