All The Love We Haven't Lost

Thursday, February 07, 2019

"When you're young, you're full of love - you haven't wasted all your love ... yet" - Billie Eilish

***

I often joke that if I remained single into my 30s, I would buy a dog. My friends laugh, but deep down it's not really a joke and dogs are fucking loyal. I am 25 now, but a few years back you would have thought of me as one of those crazy kind of people that believed in a cosmic Hollywood kind of love.

But after some years with failed soulmates coming and going, it ain't really cosmic anymore for me, actually its harder feel the way I did when I started. I agree with Billie Eilish who is 16 and says, "when you're young you haven't wasted all your love ... yet." From birth, we're all along the journey of using our love up as we go through life, some running dry faster than others.

I think I started losing my heart in my early 20s, with it leaking and spilling out over a certain highway in Western Sydney. I would speed along its asphalt almost every second day in order to go spend time with my first love. It wasn’t typically what one would consider a nice drive.

But for me, it was the most fantastic drive! That's because I knew I was going to see the one I liked.

To anyone else, it was Western Sydney’s un-scenic drive with its coarse traffic alongside bleak factories and fields of undeveloped and abandoned industry. But for me I was happy driving along it, playing the same album each time. The music would lay the beat for the plumes of toxic smoke emitted by the factories to dance alongside the highway for me like a waltzing guard of honor ushering me toward my lover.

And I know you definitely know that feeling when you’re young and infatuated - like you could move planet Earth to be with the one you love, and it wouldn’t feel in the slightest way heavy. You could be doing the most menial and monotonous thing and it could feel like you were traversing through burning constellations and shining galaxies with your mind and soul igniting in full supernova just by being with them. That’s when you know it’s fucking real.

What I'm wearing:
Pop Art Speedoes (Marcuse Australia)

But, sadly, in the long run, perhaps I was too young and building to the climax too quickly, for you know with any linear narrative, there must be some turmoil or conflict before the climax and resolution. And for most, first time romances rarely do ever work out ... (well, if it did work out for you, I would definitely call you the Lucky Ones).

Three years from then and I’m not sure if my climax and resolution will ever come. Highways are just a highways to me now, the landscape and the smoke don’t dance for me anymore.


For us single ones, it's scary how society and life chews and spits out those in their late 20s and early 30s who exit the dating vortex single. I know a few people this age who are single and who feel absolutely worthless about themselves because of this. Do you know someone like that or have you been there?

This is the time fading youth and ever mounting societal pressure to find the one who’s going to be with you and take care of you when you reach the age when you can’t go to the toilet properly. We don't want to be old and alone. But for some of us, that may be our destiny.

There are many of us who used to be the type who would give up our entire universe to live in someone else’s. But when they left, we were left with nothing. A lot of us landed here when we were young.

So we grew a little older and wiser, used up some of our love, and then began to think that maybe the life and universe we had the power to create for ourselves would never leave us and could give just as much as a lover. Like we held onto our wasting love, preserving some for ourselves and not letting others take it from us. But if we do this too much, and I can speak for myself, we risk becoming increasingly jaded as we get older.

So for the single, lost and lonely, and I know there’s many of you, they say the world was built for two, but maybe for us - that two is you and yourself, and/or you and the life you have built. Hold onto the love but don't become like the old and deadened.

And if by fate, we happen to find someone, they better be worth giving some of that up for.  It should be the type of love where you know you have things to share with each other that will elevate each other universes forever - I’d just wish people these days would pay attention and stick around long enough to receive that.

And if we don't find love like that, then we shouldn't want it, and we should learn to be more than okay with that everyday.

So ... maybe it won’t work out or maybe it will. Whatever happens, we'll reckon with it ... and you can always come visit my dog and I by my rocking chair on my porch many years from now, and we'll share all the love we haven't lost ... yet.

***

And for those of you who still believe in a soul mate ;)


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12 comments

  1. Good view on protecting your love but it sounds you've given up in the end?

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for reading. I haven't given up, I'm learning to be okay with whatever outcome, even the lonely one

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  2. What album did you play on that drive in Sydney. Still remember? And if you loose love on the way, does it vanish? Or it is still there and somebody may find it and pick it up?

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much for reading and sharing a comment.

      The album was Ultraviolence, and our song was Old Money on it. As you lose more love, it becomes harder for you to find it again in someone else and you become hardened. I think it's always possible to find it and pick it up again, but after more bad experiences we grow now cynical of people.

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    2. Like it's harder for someone who's gone through 10 breakups rather than 2 to find love again. But there is still hope for both.

      Delete
  3. But what is it that makes us improve, when we train harder and more often? And in love we suck more each time?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What makes us improve is reckoning, reflecting and using the experiences we've had for our better. Whether a bad experience makes us more cautious, or a good one reinforces particular behaviors and etc. It's also dependent on what our ultimate goal is - if it is more centered in individual success, then we might incline to give less to love because love can more easily detract from individual success - which is my own perspective in the article.

      And I don't think I suck more each time :), in fact I think I'm now better at protecting my dreams more as opposed to giving everything too irrationally in a relationship and leaving less to myself.

      Hope that makes sense~

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  4. You are really a talented writer. Enjoy reading your work. Waiting for your first novel. Wish you all the best and you will find your true love.

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    Replies
    1. Wow, really appreciate that. And thanks for reading.

      I am writing lots of random arbitrary musings now, but am not sure if it'll ever eventuate into a novel. Hopefully one day ...

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  5. Such an eloquent piece, I could feel the sorrow in your words but could also feel the spark waiting for someone to ignite it.

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