Love hurts, oh yes it does.

~ Hetty Eliot

Love hurts, that’s what everyone says. And it’s true, love and loss never seem to be otherwise than intertwined. Even the most beautiful beginnings contain the seeds of loss.

Hold on to beautiful moments, hold them in your mind like precious photographs that you have no other copy or negative of.

Don’t feel too bad because the moment is gone–I know I always did, I never could cope with things ending. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve changed my mindset. I used to think that a bad end of something, whether it be an event or a friendship, invalidated the experience and sullied the memory of it. But I’ve realized now there’s truth in the Pinterest cliche “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Even if things go sour–no one knew at the time. No matter how I feel like the future has already happened, that it’s all been written and all that’s left to me is to read it–it really hasn’t.

Believing it was already written only leads to bitterness when it’s over. You read backwards for the signs and foreshadows. Maybe trouble was foreshadowed, but as long as we did nothing wrong, why blame ourselves? And if we did do wrong, well, we know better now. We learned the hard way like we always have to. At least, I do. And everything and everyone plays a certain role in our lives, even if it all goes south later. They played their role, they changed us, maybe we changed them, write “the end” and move on.

But when people talk about how “love hurts,” they usually mean the failure to make a relationship work. But that’s not the extent of pain nor the end of it, by any means. No, in life there’s always more if you want it, or if you don’t. In fact, it’ll be worse when you get what you want. Look out–answered prayers–trouble ahead!

When you feel another’s sorrow, loss, or mortification, not merely as strongly as you would feel your own, but truly feel that it IS your own, then real love is there. There’s no “as”–only “is.” It’s not a matter of sympathy, nor empathy; it is personally yours no less than theirs.

How I wish I were one of those kind, sweet women who see the best in everyone, who aren’t shrewish or self-centered or just plain crazy. What I’ve learned, I’ve learned because I was taught by one who is naturally better and understands these things instinctually through many trials and difficulties. Only in retrospect do I see the things I shamefully didn’t see then. In moments of stomach-wrenching loss that belongs to me because it belongs to them does any real understanding emerge. All the crap burns away and in that moment I know there is no distance between us. There is no question of not sticking around in a difficulty, because how can you go away without yourself?

I’d rather be the sad one than watch your sad face and be able to do nothing about it. There was a time when I was struggling and could only contain so much misery within myself before I spread it around me generously, and my mother told me that you can only be as happy as your saddest child. I don’t have children (yet? and in either case it will entail sadness of one degree or another), but I can understand the inability to be happy as long as a loved one is unhappy. As bad as I am, I won’t ever resent it and haven’t. And if your misery is mine, if it’s my loss as well as yours, what can we do but sit and bitch and moan, eat Doritos, and laugh because, yup, it happened to us yet again?

50 thoughts on “Love hurts, oh yes it does.”

  1. Oh yes. Once again you see thru me and read the signs. It’s scary how you can so expertly describe the process of learning to give and receive until some mission assigned is fulfilled and the ones we wanted to hold onto forever have served their purpose and must move on. We might as well move on too, after a bit of adjustment and ice cream binging. I was never one to let go easily unless there was a good load of hate built up. Hate was a corrosive thing making it worse by never leaving your thoughts. Now there is the season of letting go and letting nature take its course. I still ice cream binge but always choose flavors that don’t use chemical extractions from beaver butt glands for that smooth fake vanilla taste. If we must hurt, let us hurt well and then be thankful for the time granted to be in love and set aside our reality for a time.

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    1. Thanks for getting it. I am not opaque on purpose, it’s just that I have this weird thing where I think people can hear my thoughts, so I assume it’s patently clear who and what I’m writing about. My post was essentially a letter to a loved one who lost a beloved job. And that loss is my loss as well because of the pain of it. Perhaps I can talk to him about the mission aspect of this as well. He did so much and perhaps his new job is a new mission.

      Hate is certainly a poison. I went through a period like that and got no peace or relief from the situation for well over a decade until I realized how sick it was making me.

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      1. You are a natural writer, Hetty. Your posts are always relatable and share a certain vulnerability with wit and humor I enjoy. That sense of shared grief is a special gift we often mistake for a burden. I can say, I’ve experienced that loss more often than I cared to admit, but in time I have come to understand how important those milestones were in shaping me and my life to be successful, daring, and somewhat whacky. I like to call it eccentricity. Damn! It’s fun tho. One door closes and another opens is a trite but true saying. Mission accomplished, new mission coming soon.

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          1. You say it well enough that an eccentric alchemist with faulty public decorum filters like myself can understand very well and then drift of into introspective musings. That’s the best part, finding the connection and realizing I’m not alone in the cosmos. 😊

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  2. I’m a very negative person, I tend to lack perspective, but I tell myself now, the only thing that’s the end of the world, is the end of the world, and this certainly isn’t that. Things are pretty bad here atm, but I can’t do anything about it, and life goes on. So I’m sucking it up.

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    2. My philosophy to evaluate if something is a catastrophe or not is this: did someone die? If not, is someone in danger of dying? If not, is someone in danger of something else? And so on until I hit upon the correct catastrophe.

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  7. What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval. – Mark Twain
    Difficult work most of the time…

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    1. Nevertheless, I secretly approve of myself when I say it’s difficult, just because I said it. Or when I say it’s not difficult. Either way. It’s a beautiful self-centered paradox.

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      1. To become a successful, tech species collaboration and an altruistic bent would need to be part of their genetic make up.
        Survival of the colony. No tragedy if a fellow hive member dies for the cause. Our DNA drives our independence with altruism a secondary trait, when one dies–it’s tragic.

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  9. No, I’m not ok. Sometimes you tell certain things to others, secrets, confidences, some strange things, some everyday things. Then if something happens, well, nobody knows anything about it. Sometimes people confide, but you don’t listen, and then serious things happen, and everyone wash their conscience saying no, I don’t know anything about it, he was a good boy, he was a silent neighbor …. Maybe he even spoke to you but who knows where your head was! I’m in a zero pint.
    Sometimes one thinks she has found someone to talk to, but instead he may want to do other things, he is busy studying, he has a purpose in his life. But I have none, I survive. And before we talked, it was beautiful, we discussed, but then he realizes that you feel something and then here is the wall, it moves away. He goes away and I who remain looking at the void.

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    1. If you’re referring to the post I commented on, I asked because it seemed a little out of character for you. I’m sorry if you’re feeling misunderstood. Many times in my own life, I have mistakenly thought there was more to a friendship then there really was. I confide in someone, thinking they will listen and understand me, and then their reply shows they hardly think about me at all. If people don’t care, or if they are alarmed that you feel something more, you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself for it. We can’t help feeling bad about the situation though. The best lesson to get out of this, I guess, is not to act like these people.

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  12. BTW, I saw the person who lives rent free in our heads commenting on Van Helsing’s blog…but he’s no longer there…I wonder if he’s been banned? Person who lives rent free in our heads who seems to follow me around: Just leave him alone. Jesus!

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