just another love thing

“Over hearts, I have painfully turned every stone just to find. I had found what I’ve searched to discover. I’ve come much to far for me now to find. The love that I sought could never be mine.”
-Overjoyed, Stevie Wonder

Of Heartbreaks & Letting Go
By Bon JP Largo

At three in the morning I am still awake thinking about the recent events that came my way. It is as if a silk screen was conjured right at the ceiling and memories flashed back as lively as they happened.
One lazy Sunday evening, I was at a coffee shop with two friends – an old pal and a new acquaintance. We were shared some talks for a while but as each of them got some appointments, I was left to myself. Having nothing to do, I killed time strolling inside the mall. I grew tired so I went back to the coffee shop and settled at a table outside where I puffed some smoke and sipped another serving of caffeinated shake.
I was buried deep in my thoughts when someone from my left approached and hugged me – the type of hug that is from a person so helpless seeking for aid amidst an ocean of uncertainty and confusion. I stood up carrying his weight and recognized it was my newly found acquaintance I call “Dad.” He isn’t my dad and I am calling him that way not for anything but convenience.
He buried his face on my shoulder and he was sobbing so hard and everybody around stared at us with eyes seemingly shooting millions of questions. I would say, Dad was at his saddest that time.
Learning the night before that he is fresh from heartbreak, I preferred not to ask him what the crying is for until he can muster himself. I sort of comforted him and let him settle down. When he was pacified, he told me that he saw his ex inside the mall with another guy he suspected to be the third party who caused their breakup. As I have a little background of his failed relationship, I settled to asking him why couldn’t he just let go. His answer was brief and prompt. “I love her so much.”
So what's the fuss about love? It’s just that everybody feels it. Everybody loves the feeling of being loved, of being cared for, of being attended to. Well, talking about the kind of love we give to a partner we believe to be “the one.”
Well, most of us fall too easily and are very much vulnerable to pain. It must be because we are emotionally weak when it comes to “love matters.” If a person shows an ounce of concern, we tend to think it is affection. If a person shows a gram of care, we tend to think it is love. We tend to assume too much and expect a whole lot from what is shown to us and from what we hear.
You can just imagine how hurt one would get upon finding out that there is nothing to think about and there is no basis for all the assumptions.
We tend to love with the expectation that we will be loved back. We think that that person is the worthy recipient. We think that that person can give us all the love, all the attention and all the affection we need. We tend to think that they are forever, the ones for keeps, the one we have been waiting for and the one destined for us. None do we know about the future – what it will bring forth, what it will inflict. We seem not to care about the thought and that time and little circumstances changes the course of things.
In the case of Dad, the love that he thought will be forever suddenly disappeared, leaving him shattered and in pain. Vanished dreams, broken promises, bleeding heart – a picture that of a person hanging in mid air, no clear stand and no clear hope. He voiced out all the ill feelings nourished by all the hatred inside him through the worst of the words he know. He even thought of hurting his ex and the guy. He even thought of going to a “quack” to take revenge.
But after harming the person, after taking revenge, will there be satisfaction? Will there be a bonus? Will praises be sung? Surely none. Just the good feeling brought about by the hatred. But will that “good feeling” last? And if it will, for how long?
It is really hard to accept reality as it is. We tend to defy it. We tend to hold back. Dad said he did everything he could and is still looking for more ways to resurrect the relationship that withered. He tried to patch up the shattered pieces of their relationship and tried to forget about what happened to give way to a new beginning, but to no avail.
Like what is said in the song Overjoyed, no matter how steadfast we are in our efforts to keep a thing or a person with us, no matter how we want them to stay, if the things just can’t be and are never meant to be, there is nothing we can do.
The best way to deal with it is understanding and acceptance. Through understanding and acceptance, we will be set free from the agonies of suffering, from the pains of a lost love, from the hurt of failed idealisms and the aches of vanished dreams. It must be hard but it is breaking free from a fixation, from an obsession and from a bad dream. Just shrug it off and tell yourself that this is life and you don’t have to live a life of regret.
As the maxim goes, “Love cannot be forced or created nor be destroyed if it is destined to be there.”
In a way, it is our basic instinct to rely much on how we feel rather than think of what is right for us to do. If only we know how to rationalize. If only we know when to hang on and when to let go. Maybe our teary nights will be lessened.
However, in the end we will still go back to who we are – emotionally weak creatures, vulnerable and bound to the pains of loving and living. That’s life.