Monday, March 09, 2009

Escaping Shadows

There's only one way to free yourself from heartbreak and that's to cut them loose. It's as painful as setting a dislocated shoulder but from that point onwards, the healing process begins and you can get on with the rest of your life.

The dilemma of the suitor is when to keep on persisting and when to quit? If you're too stubborn, you might simply be wasting your time with someone you never had a chance with. If you give up too easily, you might simply be an attempt away from winning her heart. There's no objective answer to this question and the real solution is a case-to-case basis. Ultimately though, it's not a question of their temperament but yours. Do you still want to keep on doing this or is it time to stop?

Romantic obsession is like a shadow. It follows you around wherever you go and often preoccupies your thoughts when you're not busy. You might try to flee from it but it's perpetually one pace behind you and you can never outrun it.

Sometimes, you fall in love with the pain of being a tragic figure. Sure, it's weary on the heart, but you develop an excuse for whining. Mine was "I courted her for four years to no avail!" and in retrospect, if I was just going to use that as my reason for self-pity, the relationship ceased to be about her.

There's also an element of trapping the proverbial lightning in a bottle. When you're in love, your senses are altered. You perceive the world in a different light, even if it's from a heartbroken perspective. In the case of someone like me, an aspiring writer (I still can't manage to call myself an author), this is the closest I'll get to conjuring a muse. It's usually the extremes of emotions which fuels inspiration. And while ecstasy is preferred, you'd settle for depression over the mundane. The phobia of the artist isn't that they'll feel pain, but that they'll stop feeling anything. And when you're in love, falling out of it is akin to dulling your senses.

What needs to be done is to cut free from your shadow and fly away like Peter Pan. The problem is that the shadow takes on the form of a beautiful illusion and you're not quite sure whether you want to be free of it.

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