Ain't Too Proud to Beg

"Did she make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of love
Is it over now--do you know how
Pick up the pieces and go home."

- "Gold Dust Woman", Fleetwood Mac

I think it was difficult for people to understand these things. I sat there, with 2 friends I had known since secondary school, in a context that was quite foreign. They definitely didn’t know how I was going to act when I had been in a relationship.

I sat there, catatonic. I had already passed the stage where you know that it is over. I had never believed that it was going to last forever. But I had not fully understood the implications of “it’s over”. A large part of the messiness is that there’s a lot of stuff that you had taken for granted and they’re suddenly not there anymore. You didn’t know that you would go nuts if you hadn’t heard from her for 3 days. And even when you did hear from her, it wouldn’t be the same as it used to be. And even if it was the same as what it used to be, it’s just the old stupid lines you used each other that sounded wonderful and fresh the first time around, but just end up sounding like some stupid parody a year later.

People contextualise things in very weird things. They keep on saying, “I want closure”. What does that mean? Probably you want things to be some happier state that it was in the past. But which past? The past before or after you met her? Or you just want the benefits (a person you can talk to, someone you can rely on, somebody you can bitch about your unhappiness to) to continue? Or you just want all this pain to go away? Can you wish the pain away by understanding the cause of it? Imagine that a car rolled over your leg, and you’re screaming your heart out. Then somebody comes over and contextualizes it for you. It was a Volvo. The driver was drinking and will probably go to jail. Boy that’s going to make the pain go away.

Then a remark came, probably meant to be sympathetic, came, and shook me out of my stupor: “look what she done to him man.”

It was something that took place in a vacuum. In a sense all relationships take place in a vacuum, something that I hadn’t fully appreciated before but understand now. People can’t really understand what you’re feeling (and even if they understand they can’t feel it.) In a sense they can’t really advice you very much. But in another sense they can because they can see a different point of view. All those crazy emotions that I went through during that time, I’m sure everybody else who has been in love for the first time would understand it. Something splendid. Something heroic. Something so truly out of this world and fresh that you are almost tempted to forget that almost every adult has had these emotions at some point or another. You think that the cavemen never felt what you were going through? It was a spiritual journey, a rite of passage.

And it wasn’t just that it was my first time going through this. It was special, dazzling, something that could not have happened if the guy was somebody else other than me, the girl was somebody else other than her. We continuously challenged each other, pushed each other on. We were unwilling to settle for mediocrity. We had to say the most romantic things, act out the grand sweeping gestures. We weren’t going to be the mediocre ones who just giggled out and blushingly blubbered the trivial banalities that people would look back upon and cringe. The sparks and fireworks were real. And that’s one aspect that I can look back upon without much bitterness.

But that seemingly innocuous comment jolted me, because it presented the situation in another way that I didn’t care for before, but I understood that that point of view mattered because people were going to see it that way. She had cheated me, and I was her helpless victim. Well some of it was just not true. It wasn’t unreciprocated. It was, in fact, one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. So why was I suddenly some kind of loser?

I had to snap out of it, quick. I had to change my course before all my gains turned into losses. If love was a fire, this one was devouring my house and all the things that it contained. What else did I have in my life other than this? Not much. How was I channeling my energy? Probably not very wisely. There were books to read, people to see, things to do and stuff to learn. I could not turn back while fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah, even for just one last look. I had to run for my life.
What I did learn from this was that whereas it was not that difficult for me to get over my heartbreak, it was substantially more difficult to get over that blow to my ego. The phrase "ain't too proud to beg" unfortunately does not apply to me.

OK, some of you have the right to ask: why bother at all? You started a relationship with the expectation that it was not going to last? What sort of a cynical sick fuck does that? I only did it for the experience points.

The answers to the questions posed by Stevie Nicks at the beginning of the post (actually the song is about the withdrawal effects of drugs) - the answers are yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

Ed's note: this is not a post about recent events.