BEDD #27: Love

I'm trying something new today. I forgot to write this blogpost until approximately eight minutes ago. It took me eight whole minutes to get up off my friend's couch, grab her laptop, log in yaddayadda (shut up i'm a human sloth).
So. Because it scared me that I nearly dropped this project sooooo close to the finish, I'm just going to write. I'm going to type type type all these stupid bouncing thoughts in my head until midnight, and hit "Publish." No editing allowed.

The weird thing about winter break is how I never have any real plans. Spring breaks, fall breaks, even summer breaks to some degree, are all meticulously planned in advance. Each second on an agenda or itinerary. Winter break blows and rustles and I act like a poetic hobo, invading friends' houses and crashing on a lot of couches. The last few days specifically, I've taken in a lot of art. From Les Miserables to Struck by Lightening a few minutes ago, and about 4/5ths of Daughter of Smoke and Bone (a wonderfully captivating book I got for Christmas and strongly strongly stronglyyy recommend if you're at all into fantastical YA, like the shows Buffy or Supernatural and/or ever had a shameful Twilight phase. ((you did. don't lie to me.))). In fact, as I type this I'm rewatching what may be one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time, Crazy, Stupid, Love. Regardless of how distracted I am by Ryan Gosling's sexiness, it's all gotten me thinking quite a bit about love.

Loooove. Lurve. L0v3. What is it? Culture and media are lousy with it, and at seventeen I haven't been able to escape the crushing urge that I should be puppy-sick with it. (Puppy-sick? That's a thing... right?) I've tried to be in love countless times, verbalized it twice, but don't think I've ever really found it. In my mature moments, it doesn't bother me too much, because seventeen is a fraction of a life, and no offense to my Y-chromosomed readers, but the suitable male mates in my age bracket has got to do a lot of growing up to do. In my less mature moments, it scares me, frustrates me, even depresses me.

But this isn't about me. For once, I really don't care. I'm more interested in the idea in the abstract. Romantic love has been distorted and confused by... everything? I don't know. It just feels like a sham. I'm supposed to "grow up," fall in love, get married, pop out a few kids and raise them in wedded bliss? Awesome, but only heterosexual couples can achieve the marriage part, and even those legal marriages end in divorce fifty (or more?) percent of the time. People are abused, mistreated, and generally unhappy. Love makes people do horrible, stupid things and just... ugly cry. 83% of ugly sobbing was caused by romantic heartbreak... is a statistic I just made up.

"To love another is to see the face of God."
A famous quote from the greatest book ever written. I love that book because though it contains a heart-wrenchingly beautiful plotline of romantic love, Marius and Cosette are a minor b-plot in the grander story of redemption and Jean ValJean's beautiful, self-sacrificial acts of love. So if love is purest and most beautiful when one lays down his/her life for another, the image of beautiful parenting (religiously, an image of a benevolent God), where does that leave romantic love? An afterthought? Or a forethought, as romantic love leads to sexual love, leading to children who offer opportunities of self-sacrifice...

-insert musings on romantic love's ties to sexual love and both's mingling roles in society here... because I totally have them, but I'm way too immature to verbalize them, much less publish them on a blog... w;lfalkjdfosie-

I guess I'm just sick of seeing people get hurt. Screw that, that's a lie. I'm sick of getting hurt. This isn't a cry for help, or a call for pity and I hate that it often turns into that. I just wish I could reach a solid opinion on the subject, or have complex conversations about it with many people, and many different types of people. But it seems like an emotional subject, and more often that not, I feel weirdly needy or stupid for asking. Does that even make sense??

I have thirteen minutes left and little else to say. Actually, I have a ton more to say I just don't know how to eloquently say it. Or if I've said it already. In fact, this writing exercise is kind of terrifying. Not reading over what I've written, obsessively editing, is driving me a little nuts. I should have started with a less sensitive subject, perhaps. BLeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhh I've eaten a lot of potato chips today.